Free Republic

There are 3,553,000 more foreign-born workers employed today than when President Obama took office in January 2009, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).There are currently close to 25 million foreign-born workers employed in the United States, and this number increased by 14,000 in September. In January 2009, when the president took office, there were only 21,928,000 foreign-born workers employed.The BLS does not distinguish between legal immigrants who are permitted to work here and illegal aliens in this data set.While the number of employed foreign-born workers is increasing, the number of native-born workers has declined. For the...

News of a burst of hiring last month sent bond prices lower and the dollar higher in early trading on Friday, while the stock market opened lower. Apple rose 1 percent after it was announced that the company would be joining the Dow Jones industrial average, replacing AT&T. AT&T fell 1 percent. KEEPING SCORE The Dow fell 0.98 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.85 percent. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 0.60 percent. MORE JOBS United States employers extended a healthy streak of hiring in February by adding 295,000 jobs, the 12th straight monthly gain above...

As the U.S. economy has steadily recovered from the Great Recession, the critical missing piece has been a painful lack of pay raises for many Americans. Their pain may be easing. Friday’s jobs report signaled that raises have finally begun to flow through an economy in which, once you factor in inflation, most people earn less than when the Great Recession struck in 2007. The average hourly wage jumped 0.5 percent between December and January—the sharpest monthly gain since 2008—the government’s survey of businesses found. The average has now risen 2.2 percent over the past 12 months to $24.75, comfortably...

On Saturday [1] at the Associated Press, aka the Administration’s Press [2], reporter Christopher Rugaber described the economy’s pickup of 321,000 payroll jobs in November as “booming.”Not so fast, pal.Even if you accept that November’s seasonally adjusted result fairly reflects the underlying reality — and it doesn’t, which will be shown shortly — it will only be “booming” once we see such a figure repeated for at least five more months. On a workforce-adjusted basis, the analogous post-recession period during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s had a streak of 19 out of 20 months with an equal or...

Initial Reaction The payroll survey shows a net gain of 248,000 jobs vs. an expectation of 215,000 jobs. Last month was revised up by 69,000 to 180,000. The six-month string of plus 200,000 jobs remains broken. Last month the household survey had a gain in employment of only 16,000. That number was not revised up. This month the household survey shows a respectable gain of 232,000, pretty much in line with the establishment survey. Nonetheless the household survey over the past six months has been much weaker than the establishment survey. One or the other is apt for some serious...

Shockingly enough the numbers are bad and performing below the usual optimistic expectations. Just like every other time.I’ll just give you the headlines for a taste of how frantically the media is spinning the bad news. A Disappointing Jobs Report May Mask Economy’s Strength – NPRJobs Report: Not Good, but Not Terrible Either – New York TimesDon’t freak out about bad jobs report – Washington PostWhy weak August jobs report probably a fluke – MarketWatchThe Awful New Jobs Report Has One Silver Lining – New Republic It’s a fluke! There’s a silver lining! The bad news is really good news!...

The headline of today’s jobs report, that 288,000 jobs were created in the last month, is positive. At least, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. However, as with most economic reports these days, there is a veneer of good news — but when you look closer, the White House is using the positive headlines to hide the growing deterioration of the American workforce. Last month, 523,000 full-time jobs were lost, while 799,000 part-time jobs were added. Another way of looking at these numbers is that almost all of the 288,000 jobs created last...

The number of Americans 16 and older who did not participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were not participating in the labor force in April. …

Is this the reason for the blowout, on the surface, payroll number? In June the BLS reports that the number of full-time jobs tumbled by 523K to 118.2 million while part-time jobs soared by 799K to over 28 million! Looking at the breakdown of full and part-time jobs so far in 2014, we find that 926K full-time jobs were added to the US economy. The offset: 646K part-time jobs. Something tells us that the fact that the BLS just reported June part-time jobs rose by just shy of 800,000 the biggest monthly jump since 1993, will hardly get much airplay...

Hiring over the past five months has been the strongest since the late 1990s tech boom as the economy added 288,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent from 6.3 percent. The Labor Department says those gains follow additions of 217,000 jobs in May and 304,000 in April, figures that were both revised upward.

Does a solid jobs report change the overall economic picture and offer the beleaguered Democratic party a new leg up for the midterm elections? My answer is no and no. Even with all the political slicing and dicing that accompany these big reports, the April employment survey was a lot stronger than virtually anyone expected. Nonfarm payrolls surged by 288,000. Private payrolls gained 273,000. The unemployment rate registered a big decline, dropping from 6.7 percent to 6.3 percent. Some are arguing that lower unemployment is a function of 806,000 dropouts from the labor force. But that's a reach. In the...

Yes, this is the Obama economy. No matter how much Mr. "I'm the President" tries to deny it, he owns the economy in which we are living. The January jobs report was not a beacon of hope. In fact, it was really bad. The December jobs report was also in the tank. That makes two months in a row of very few jobs being created. Amazingly, the unemployment rate continues to tick down. We are being told it was because 115,000 unemployed workers found new jobs. What most of the media will not tell us is that 90,000 more unemployed...

… Unemployment didn’t just fall to a five-year low of 6.6 percent; it fell for the right reasons. Nearly 500,000 Americans poured into the job market last month, and 616,000 more people said they had jobs. Previous drops in the unemployment rate had occurred partly because many Americans gave up looking for work and therefore were no longer counted as unemployed. Factories, mines and construction firms hired at a healthy pace. These so-called goods-producing industries added 76,000 jobs in January, the most since January 2006. Hiring by goods producers is typically seen as a harbinger of an improved job market....

The soft January employment report showing a gain of just 113,000 jobs suggests that what Democrats hoped would be a big advantage in the midterm elections this fall—a rapidly strengthening economy—may not materialize. Not even an economy creating hundreds of thousands of jobs a month would likely be enough to help take the House back for Democrats. But the party was hoping that an improved employment situation and faster growth would convince swing voters not to toss out vulnerable Democratic incumbents in Louisiana, Alaska and North Carolina or flip open seats including Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota to the...

As President Obama nears the end of his fifth year in office, his toughest job is dreaming up new excuses for his administration's mounting failures. This month he is beset by multiple challenges to explain why the rollout of his massive national health insurance system is plagued by failures, and why job creation fell to another new low in his persistently weak economy. Obama and his White House excuse factory have come up with some doozies in the last week or so. The systemic breakdown in Obama's online health care insurance marketplace, they said, is due to Obamacare's huge popularity...

The jobs report looks good. The jobs report wasn’t as bad as anticipated. There are fewer people working, but that’s okay - the unemployment rate still dropped last month. Are you fed up with the U.S. federal government’s “spin” and constant efforts to convince you that the labor market isn’t as bad as it seems? At the beginning of each month, the U.S. Department of Labor tabulates the number of employment positions that were created the month before. Journalists and pundits are always eager to publicize what has come to be loosely known as the “jobs report,” with headlines that...

Inquiring minds are digging into average weekly hours of workers looking for Obamacare effects on which to place blame. Average Weekly Hours Of Production And Nonsupervisory Employees  Since this data series began in 1964, the average weekly workweek has been trending lower. Note the tendency following each recession. 1990-1998 is the only exception to the general rule that hours never recovered to the previous pre-recession level. Last Five Observations 2013-07: 33.6 Hours 2013-06: 33.7 Hours 2013-05: 33.7 Hours 2013-04: 33.7 Hours 2013-03: 33.8 Hours  Lets' zero in to a tighter timeline for a closer look. The second chart shows that in spite of Obamacare,...

Another month and another jobs report that's so bad it’s good. At least that’s how Wall Street will look at it, because free money from the Fed will now continue. The economy added 162,000 jobs overall, well below the previous few months. Additionally wages and hours fell, meaning workers are bringing home fewer bucks. You'll likely hear that unemployment fell but that was largely due to people giving up looking for work. Obama’s best tactic so far for combating unemployment has been to convince people that there is no work for them, and where possible, use legislation to discourage full-time...

Initial Reaction  The establishment survey showed a gain of 162,000 jobs. The previous two months were revised lower. The employment change for May revised down by 19,000 (from +195,000 to +176,000), and the employment change for June revised down by 7,000 (from +195,000 to +188,000). The unemployment rate dropped 0.2 to 7.4%.  Explaining the Unemployment Rate Drop Employment rose by 227,000 of which 103,000 were part-time jobs. The Civilian Labor Force Declined by 37,000 even though population rose by 204,000.Those "Not in Labor Force" rose by 240,000.Participation Rate fell 0.1 to 63.4%, a mere 0.1 higher than the low of 63.3%...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, July nonfarm payrolls (NFP) rose 162,000. Expectations were for 185,000 – a big swing and a miss. Junes’s NFP was revised lower to 188,000. The unemployment rate fell from 7.5% to 7.4%. The rate dropped because the civilian labor force declined by 37,000 … from 155,835 to 155,798. unemploymentrate080213 U6 unemployment, full-time and part-time unemployment rate, also fell slightly to 14%. u6un080213 Not in labor force increase by 240,000. notinfaborfore Labor force participation rate fell from 63.5% to 63.4%. lfp080213 And there are still greater than 11.5 million unemployed. unemployed080213 US Average Hourly...