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Payrolls rose 110,000, as services employment gained 114,000 and goods-producing employment fell 4,000. Economists had expected an overall gain of about 100,000. Small-business employment rose 58,000, compared with 53,000 for medium businesses. Large-business employment fell 1,000. September’s result was revised higher, to an expansion of 116,000 for private-sector payrolls from a prior estimate of 91,000.

Texas added 1,900 construction jobs last month and 400 of them were in Austin. Texas experienced a net job loss of 1,300 this month, causing the August unemployment rate to tick up to 8.5 percent from 8.4 percent in July. A year ago, Texas’ unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. Texas Workforce Commissioner Tom Pauken blamed a “stagnant national economy” for the job losses, but most of the cuts were in local government. About 11,500 positions were eliminated at municipalities and counties in August. The state government added 1,700 jobs and the federal government increased its workforce in Texas by 400....

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Private-sector payrolls increased 91,000 in August, led by the service-producing sector and small businesses, according to the ADP employment report released Wednesday. Economists were predicting the ADP figure would rise by about 100,000. The expansion for July was revised down to 109,000 from a prior estimate of 114,000... According to ADP, service-sector employment rose 80,000 in August, compared with 11,000 for the goods-producing sector. Small-business employment rose 58,000, compared with 30,000 for medium businesses and 3,000 for large businesses.

Kasich's Olive Branch Governor John Kasich reached out to Ohio public employee unions to renegotiate collective bargaining policy in which Ohio Senate Bill 5, passed by the Ohio legislature, would give the Governor more leverage than the public unions in deciding how much the state can afford to pay state workers in terms of benefits like pensions and health care. The unions will have none of it, and are going for an "all or nothing" approach to defeat Senate Bill 5. My comment to the local lib newspaper, which is heavily in favor of higher taxation and the pacifying of...

Will the governor sign the death certificate for his brainchild? The House unanimously voted late Monday to accept Senate changes to House Bill 1201, Rep. Lois Kolkhorst's legislation that would remove all references to the Trans-Texas Corridor from state statutes. And, oh yes, allow an 85 mph speed limit on certain roads completed after June. The bill now goes to Gov. Rick Perry for his signature, or his veto. For now, the only road likely to qualify for the 85 mph limit will be the southern 40 miles of the Texas 130 tollway, now under construction between the southeast outskirts...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private employers added 179,000 jobs in April, coming in shy of economists' expectations, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the ADP Employer Services report would show a gain of 198,000 jobs. March private payrolls were revised up to an increase of 207,000 from a previously reported 201,000.

Most people say that a job is good for making money. So, if you don't need money, what's the point? The fabled English aristocratic class of the late 19th and early 20th century apparently thought that way, if the caricatures painted by Jeeves and Wooster, Brideshead, and the like have any truth to them. Their main job was getting dressed and undressed. It seems like young Americans are thinking the same way. Doug French drew my attention to some statistics from the Wall Street Journal on teenage employment that knocked me out. In 2000, slightly more than a third of...

In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan established a nationwide reputation as a friend of the taxpayer, by complaining about the large number of people on welfare. The term "welfare queen" came into popular use. However, Americans have never seriously debated the greatest burden that is on the shoulders of taxpayers. These are the millions of non-productive employees who work for the federal, state, and local governments, many of whom do nothing but sit on their butts all day. Whenever America experiences an economic recession, millions of people in the private sector lose their jobs. But the public sector employees never lose...

Unfunded state and city pension liability has been isolated by many analysts as the next big crisis on the horizon. But it looms in relative silence, largely because Americans simply do not want to talk about it. Let's be honest; it's not exactly dinner table conversation. Many Americans have family and friends that work in public jobs and many of them expect a considerable pension that could be compromised if the system is altered. So the issue is far too personal for public pensioners to embrace any logic that could suggest the system is flawed, while non-pensioners usually want to...

The private sector created an eye-popping 297,000 jobs from November to December, according a report from ADP that was the highest number the payroll firm has ever reported. In its monthly report compiled with Macroeconomic Advisors, ADP said the service sector accounted for the bulk of the creation, with 270,000 jobs while goods producers supplied the remaining 27,000. Manufacturing saw a gain of 23,000 jobs while construction was unchanged. Large businesses saw the fewest gains, with 36,000 jobs, while medium-sized businesses, with between 50 and 499 workers, created 144,000 positions. The number was far higher than the 100,000 economists expected...

Private-sector employment posted its biggest improvement in three years last month, according to a report issued Wednesday, while separate data showed the biggest increase in job cuts in eight months. Payrolls among private employers rose by 93,000 in November, the 10th consecutive month of increases, payroll processor ADP said in its report. The jump was bigger than economists had expected. The ADP employment report was expected to show a gain of 58,000 jobs in November, according to the Briefing.com consensus of economist forecasts. In addition, the October gain was revised by nearly double to 82,000 from the originally reported 43,000....

Back in 1869, the Knights of Labor was founded as America’s first organized labor union. During this time, workers were experiencing a decrease in pay along with a decrease in quality of working conditions. Meanwhile, the industrial revolution was booming making captains of industry, like John D. Rockefeller, very wealthy men. The founding of labor unions was certainly justifiable, and the right thing to do. At the beginning the union members requested reasonable things such as child labor laws, the standard 40 hour work week, and a safe working environment. Upon President John F. Kennedy’s “Executive Order 10988” in 1962,...

Official numbers released by the government late last week show salaries of federal workers falling slightly farther behind their private-sector counterparts in the last year, by an average of 2.1 percent across the country. The disparity shows wide variations among the 31 regions where the government compares federal pay with salaries for private-sector jobs in order to determine pay raises. The Washington-Baltimore area, for example, showed among the largest gaps, with federal workers 38 percent behind the private sector.

With just 12 days until the November 2 elections, pro-market, small-government candidates, activists, and concerned citizens should study and then disseminate three charts that perfectly encapsulate the status quo that, if all goes well, the midterm vote will capsize. The first of these looks as intricate as an integrated circuit. Titled “Your New Health Care System,” this schematic shows how Obamacare’s hundreds of moving parts will fit together and whirl — or not, as rising health costs at Boeing, McDonald’s, and the United Federation of Teachers (to name a few affected organizations) already reveal. Staff members at the Congressional Joint...

Last week's dismal jobs figures tell us exactly what the President Obama's stimulus did: It temporarily saved jobs in state and local government -- thereby slowing our recovery. Friday's job scorecard for September -- the last before Election Day -- didn't carry even a hint of an imminent boom. Unemployment stayed at 9.6 percent, with private companies adding 64,000 jobs. And 64,000 jobs is nothing. The economy must create nearly five times that to keep up with population growth and replace 7.6 million jobs lost since 2007. Worse, the new hires were down a third from August -- and the...

As head cheerleader of the stagnant and stumbling economy, President Obama has lost all the frills on his pompoms. Exhausted, he stood before cameras yesterday and, in dreary cadences of despair, did his best to draw lipstick on the mouth of a sick pig. Any way you try spinning it, the latest job numbers are disastrous for Democrats desperate to hold on to power in next month's elections. Take the rosiest spin possible out of the White House. "Today's employment report shows that private-sector payrolls increased by 64,000 in September, continuing nine consecutive months of private-sector job growth," Obama's chief...

A day after President Obama declared that his administration is not “some academic exercise,” Lawrence Summers announced plans to step down as director of the president’s National Economic Council and return to Harvard University. Christina Romer just left her post as head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to go back to the University of California, Berkeley. The current administration has suffered from a historic lack of private-sector experience,

According to Keynesian economists, government hiring stimulates the private sector during a recession because government employees go out and spend much of their paychecks in the private sector, and extra demand is exactly what the private sector needs during a recession. But this year’s experience with census hiring contradicts that view. Keynesians acknowledge that, someday, the private sector will pay taxes to finance the salaries and benefits of government employees, but this cost is said to be offset by the additional demand for goods and services produced in the private sector, which have those government employees as their customers.

I doubt you'll see this headline anywhere else. But that's how many new private sector jobs have been added so far this year, according to the household survey of employment. The household survey has a strong tendency to lead the establishment survey, especially in the years following the end of a recession. That's because it is based on a random telephone survey of households, whereas the establishment survey relies on sending a questionnaire to known businesses. So the household survey is more likely to pick up the newly self-employed and those employed by new startups that have not been...

Out of work? Behind on your bills? Defaulting on your mortgage, maybe? If so, you no doubt did not hold a government job before getting canned. Some 2½ years after the start of the recession, the evidence is now clear: The private-sector economy took a severe blow -- but public-sector workers were spared. In fact, their numbers actually grew, albeit slightly. This stark picture clearly reflects upside-down priorities -- particularly if officials care about boosting the truly productive parts of the economy. Start with a few telling statistics: From January 2008 to January 2010, private-sector jobs plunged from 115.5 million...

According to a Library of Congress survey,  Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in America.  It is required reading in management training at BB&T, the 12th largest bank in the U.S. and one that resisted taking TARP bailout funds.Since President Obama took office, Atlas Shrugged has been making a renaissance with rising sales and library waiting lists, partly because it explains our current economic woes more straightforwardly than most of what we hear from today’s experts.What happened in Rand’s narrative is coming to pass today, with the public sector...

One of the biggest obstacles to job growth may actually surprise most Americans: as fast as the private sector is creating jobs, the government is shedding them. And the cuts are far from over. Despite all the gloom and doom about the US economy, the private sector actually created 620,000 jobs over the past seven months, far faster than in the previous two recessions. The private sector is adding jobs now—that's good--because a year ago we were sliding toward oblivion,' says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. The problem, economists say, is that the pace of hiring...

I Don't have the heart to break any more bad news to President Obama. So, if you happen to have his phone number, please deliver this message: Go easy on the upbeat chatter about the number of jobs being created by private companies. Your information is inaccurate. The president, I'm sorry to say, is starting to look very foolish. It's presumptuous of me, I know, to think that this president, or any politician, for that matter, really cares about telling the truth. But just in case, here's the hole that Mr. Obama is digging himself into. Soon after another awful...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Companies hired more workers in July but the gains are too slow to reduce unemployment and spur the economy significantly, reports showed on Wednesday. The reports come two days before the government's more comprehensive jobs reading for the month and illustrate that while the economy's improving, the jobs market has a long way to go. U.S. private employers added 42,000 jobs in July, payrolls processor ADP Employer Services reported, slightly more than economists forecast but still a tepid figure. Separately, the Institute for Supply Management reported increased growth in the services sector in July, while its...

Private sector employment rose slightly more than expected in July, easing some concerns about labor market weakness ahead of a key government jobs report later this week. Private employers added 42,000 jobs in July, compared with a revised gain of 19,000 in June, the report by a payrolls processor ADP Employer Services showed on Wednesday. The rise in hiring was slightly higher than an estimate from economists surveyed by Reuters for a gain of 40,000 private-sector jobs. The June ADP figure originally was reported as a gain of 13,000 jobs. However, while above market expectations the gains still show the...

Now he tells us. He's been reading Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman instead of playing golf and shooting hoops, as reported by the press. While no one was looking, he's been downloading podcasts of the Glenn Beck show and checking out heritage.org on his iPad. He's a born-again free-marketer, supply-sider, and friend of business large and small. That's the freely translated gist of President Obama's July 9 speech at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Who would have known it? It is Obama who, as he "said in the campaign" and as he "repeated many times as President," thinks...

Want a 22 percent raise with zero risk of being let go? Get a federal job. A just-released report from Heritage Foundation scholar James Sherk reveals that times have never been better for civilian employees of Uncle Sam. To wit: Federal employees enjoy salaries 22 percent higher than folks in the private sector with comparable qualifications and job descriptions -- 30 to 40 percent higher when you factor in extra-generous fringe benefits. Plus, civil-service protections make it almost impossible to be fired. Nice work if you can get it, right? Actually, the federal government seems to be the only employer...

Where are the jobs, Barry?New York Times: The United States added just 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, a dishearteningly low number that could add to the growing number of economists who warn that the economic recovery is stalling. Over all, the nation lost 125,000 jobs, , according to the monthly snapshot of the job market released by the Labor Department on Friday. Most of the lost jobs came as temporary workers hired by the federal government to help with the census exited their jobs.The unemployment rate, based on a different survey, declined to 9.5 percent in June from the...

We Americans needed this weekend, with something to celebrate -- our independence from overseas oppressors. Indeed, the Tea Party movement is attempting to recapture the attitude of our nation’s founders toward overweening government, in this case our own. The distance from Washington to Main Street is not as great as that from Boston Harbor to the Palace of Westminster, but it is great indeed. Most Americans want to see spending reined in and taxes cut. But when the manager of a custard stand in Milwaukee suggested to Vice President Joe Biden that he would prefer lower taxes to payment for...

The Office of Management and Budget reports that total federal revenue more than doubled every decade from 1940 to 1980 (Table 1.3, tables). And from 1980 to 2000, total federal revenue almost doubled every decade, going from $517 billion in 1980 to $1.032 trillion in 1990 to $2.025 trillion in 2000. But in 2010, OMB estimates that total revenue will be only an anemic $2.165 trillion. If the current decade had kept pace with the last two decades, the feds would have receipts in 2010 of $4 trillion. That's more than enough to balance the budget. But the above numbers...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-medvedev-russia-us-russia-business-summit Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 24, 2010 Remarks by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia at the U.S.-Russia Business Summit U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 3:08 P.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here with my friend and partner, President Medvedev, and I want to thank him again for his leadership, especially his vision for an innovative Russia that’s modernizing its economy, including deeper economic ties between our...

Concerning the job numbers from May, one can almost echo Henry James' exclamation after examining letters pertaining to Lord Byron's incest: "Nauseating, perhaps, but how quite inexpressibly significant." Except that the May numbers' significance can be expressed: A theory is being nibbled to death by facts. Private-sector job creation almost stopped in May. The 41,000 jobs created were dwarfed by the 411,000 temporary and low-wage government jobs needed to administer the Census. Last year's stimulus having failed to hold unemployment below 8 percent as predicted, Barack Obama might advocate another stimulus -- amending Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution,...

Once all promised benefits are included, government employees at all levels—local, state, and federal—receive significantly greater total compensation than private-sector workers. A recent research paper released by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence argues that employees of state and local governments earn salaries and benefits significantly less than similar private-sector workers. But this study omits unfunded pension and retiree health benefits for public-sector workers. Once unfunded promises are included, state and local employees may receive significantly greater total compensation than private-sector workers. Study authors Keith Bender and John Heywood of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee analyzed differences in salaries...

WASHINGTON – Job creation by private companies grew at the slowest pace of the year in May, even while the hiring of temporary census workers drove overall payrolls up 431,000. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent as many people gave up searching for work. The Labor Department's new employment snapshot released Friday suggested that outside of the burst of hiring of temporary census workers by the federal government many private employers are wary of bulking up their work forces. That indicates the economic recovery may not bring relief fast enough for millions of Americans who are unemployed. Virtually all...

Union Influence: The White House picks its most frequent visitor to sit on its deficit commission. He believes in big government, in big spending, and that the workers of the world should unite. What could go wrong? Computer security firms have been known to hire the best former hackers because they know best how to stop others like them. But the appointment of Andy Stern, president of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), to a bipartisan commission to come up with ways to deal with the rapidly rising federal budget deficit is like having a serial arsonist organize Fire Prevention...

Can a market-based health care system work? We can begin to answer this question by looking at Lasik, a medical procedure that's not covered by health insurance. And has gotten better—and cheaper—over time. "How to Fix Health Care" proposes three simple reforms that will put us on a path to a health-care system that's better, more affordable, and more accessible. And get this—these market-based reforms can be implemented without creating new government programs or raising taxes.

Yet another travesty is unfolding before our eyes in these United States of America. While tens of millions of Americans continue to struggle through difficult economic conditions, with hundreds of thousands more losing their jobs every month, tens of thousands more losing their homes and their businesses, and millions more facing salary cuts and pay freezes, government employees are prospering and getting rewarded financially more than ever. As the economy struggles, incomes fall, and business bankruptcies and mortgage default rates remain at all time highs, the federal government spending is booming and its employees are enjoying increased hiring and higher...

Something has gone haywire in the California Democratic Party. It is supposed to be the party that cares about poor families, blue-collar workers and the unemployed – allegedly unlike the Republican Party, which Democrats regularly disparage as being devoted to the wealthy and indifferent to economic suffering. But in Sacramento, the policies pursued by the Democrats who control the Legislature could scarcely be more hostile to what are supposed to be its prime constituencies. Increasingly extreme environmental laws have created a depression in Central Valley farming communities. These laws, high taxes and heavy regulation in general threaten to drive away...

Dr. William Anderson’s superb article concerns a subject some of the Shooters and I have been kicking around recently. Our focus was on why governments shouldn’t build roads at all, part of which is that it is always inefficient to filter money through some bureaucracy. Between waste, the misallocation of funds to pay for the departments and personnel, inferior products, social engineering, and the inevitable corruption when tax dollars are being scattered around “public” roads are a very poor solution to the problem of how to move traffic from points A through Z. As is always the case, unfettered private...

On October 29, I wrote an article entitled, Taxpayers vs. Taxtakers, a Visual, using numbers obtained from the CATO Institute, that showed the huge discrepancy between what federal government workers (paid by tax dollars) are paid over what the private sector (you know, that group that President Obama continuously demonizes as greedy), the non-government workers earn. This latter group could also be known as the taxpayers who pay the taxtakers salaries.

"Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government." - Milton Friedman The art of medicine requires the health care provider to make an accurate diagnosis in order to formulate an effective treatment plan. This is also true of the art of policy making and is magnified by the fact that one piece of legislation affects the lives of millions of individuals whereas the art of medicine affects only one. Proponents of the health care reform bills coming out of Congress claim the bills will decrease medical cost growth over time, making...

Bob (Janjuah) Is Back... And He Is Pissed Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/02/2009 10:53 -0500 Asset Bubbles banking banks Ben Bernanke bernanke Bob Janjuah British Pound Bunds C China CPI Credit Debt Deflation Demographics earnings ECB economy Equities Euro European Central Bank Fail Failures Fiat FX GDP Gilts Gold greed Gross Domestic Product History IG Inflation ISM Japan Key money pay policy prices RBS Recession risk stocks Turkey Unemployment United Kingdom US USD USTs Volatility Bob's World: Happy Christmas, Cold Turkey Time There are 5 things that really matter now: There are 3 'players' - the Private Sector ('PS')...

“Free markets have failed us, and there’s no place else to turn other than the federal government,” seems to about sum up Washington’s approach over the past year.

Many people reading the op-ed piece in The New York Times co-authored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) titled “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation)” might scratch their head at this odd alliance of political personalities. Some would give up reading after a couple of paragraphs, since the article proceeds from the deeply flawed premise that man’s activities produce harmful air pollutants in sufficient quantities to negatively affect Earth’s environment. Those who listen to only one side of the climate change argument hold this position. They accept as fact a theory with at least as...

(snip) Before the Republican Party can make a comeback consistent with its principles, it needs help from the private sector. Specifically, it needs a private sector the public can believe in. The core selling point of a conservative political party is that the private sector is inherently more efficient, dynamic and ethical than the public sector. That’s a hard sell these days. There are too many examples of public-sector excess for the public to swallow free-market fundamentalism. It was the private sector, not the government, that got the bright idea to insure bundled mortgages. It’s a private-sector bureaucrat, not a...

As part of his drive to overhaul the nation's health-care system, President Obama has presented himself as a pragmatist who is more interested in creating the best possible plan than in rigidly adhering to a given ideology. "It's conceivable that there are other ideas out there that we have not thought of," he acknowledged at last Thursday's White House Health Care Summit. "If there is a way of getting this done where we're driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. private sector job losses accelerated in February, according to a report by ADP Employer Services that suggests hefty employment declines are on the way in the government's payrolls report due on Friday. ADP said on Wednesday that private employers cut 697,000 jobs in February versus a revised 614,000 jobs lost in January. The January job cuts were originally reported at 522,000. It was the biggest job loss since the report's launch in 2001 and showed the misery of declining employment spreading broadly and evenly throughout the economy. The service sector, which often resists the grip...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/AdvisorsToConductImmediateCyberSecurityReview/ Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 12:00 am President Obama Directs the National Security and Homeland Security Advisors to Conduct Immediate Cyber Security Review THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _______________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release February 9, 2009 President Obama Directs the National Security and Homeland Security Advisors to Conduct Immediate Cyber Security Review Melissa Hathaway Selected to Lead the Review President Obama has directed the National Security and Homeland Security Advisors to conduct an immediate review of the plan, programs, and activities underway throughout the government dedicated to cyber security. This...