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Sweden's new Social Democrat prime minister Stefan Loefven unveiled what he called a "feminist" government including Green Party ministers for the first time in the Nordic country. ... Sweden is in a serious situation -- unemployment has become entrenched at high levels, school results have collapsed and the welfare system has major shortcomings ...

Minnesota job vacancies hit a 13-year high in the second quarter, with employers reporting nearly 84,700 job openings, state officials said Thursday. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) said about 56 percent of those job openings were in the seven-county Twin Cities area, with 44 percent in Greater Minnesota. Over the past year, outstate areas posted the strongest job growth. DEED said the most common job vacancies were in the fields of health care and social assistance (19 percent of the total), retail (15 percent), accommodation and food service (12 percent), manufacturing (8 percent) and educational services...

Republicans and conservatives frustrated with the GOP’s failure to nationalize this year’s midterm elections received a gift last week from, of all people, President Barack Obama. Going completely unappreciated is how his Department of Labor, particularly its Bureau of Labor Statistics, has from all appearances been conducting a de facto midterm election campaign with cooked unemployment figures for quite some time.On October 2, Obama did the job elected Republican leaders up to that point had failed to do. Speaking at Northwestern University, he told his audience [1]: ”I am not on the ballot this fall. … But make no...

There was, however, a big problem. Because while according to the BLS survey employers have almost never had more open positions, they have also decided to put an abrupt stop to hiring, something which certainly points to a major disconnect in the US labor market.

Jobless claims by American workers for unemployment benefits fell by 1,000 to 287,000 last week, a sign that US employers are hanging on to workers. Jobless claims are currently lower than they were before the country's economic crisis began. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to nearly its lowest level since before the 2007-09 recession, a sign of growing steam in the U.S. labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 287,000 in the week ended Oct. 4, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The data adds...

Legendary GOP campaign strategist Lee Atwater was guided by a political maxim he called the Napoleonic rule: Never interfere with the enemy when it is in the process of defeating itself. Atwater, a master political infighter without peer, would be jumping up and down with glee if he had lived to see what is now happening to President Obama and his party in the 2014 midterm elections. To say the Democrats, led by Obama's many blunders, are tearing themselves apart is putting it mildly. Some of his top advisers are blowing the whistle on him. Consider what has happened in...

CNSNews.com) - The number of Americans on food stamps has topped 46,000,000 for 35 straight months, according to data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA). From September 2011 through July 2014, the latest month for which data is available, the number of persons participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has exceeded 46 million. As of July 2014, there were 46,486,434 beneficiaries of the SNAP program. Excerpt - - - Graphs at the source

<p>Two years ago this week, the nation’s unemployment dipped below 8% for the first time since the start of the Great Recession. Almost immediately, Republicans were outraged – the good news couldn’t be real, they said, but rather must be the result of an elaborate conspiracy.</p>

In a perfect world, Democrats would love to the 2014 midterm elections to be all about the economy. But in 2014, the world has been far from perfect. And Democrats say it's hard to grab the public's attention and focus it on a slowly improving economy with crises popping up at home and abroad. "August was Ebola. It was ISIS. It was Ukraine," Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told a small group of reporters Monday morning. "Global issues dominated. And in September, those issues continued to dominate. And so, part of the headwind...

America's jobs picture is seeing huge improvement, with robust numbers that are giving investors confidence in the economy. The U.S. added 248,000 jobs last month, bringing the unemployment rate below 6 percent. But one part of that picture is still a puzzle: People continue to stop looking for work, and in doing so, are dropping out of the labor pool. In fact, the participation rate in the labor force has fallen to 62.7 percent -- its lowest level since early 1978. How can this be? As the job market heats up and the unemployment rate falls, wouldn't that mean more...

The government's newly released food stamp enrollment figures reveal that the number of individuals in America on food stamps has topped 46 million for 35 consecutive months. According to the Department of Agriculture, the number of individuals in July (the most recent month figures are available) who received food stamps was 46,486,434. The last time food stamp enrollments fell below 46 million was July 2011.

While people celebrate the fact that America's unemployment rate has fallen below six percent for the first time since 2008, some economic experts say not so fast and point out the discrepancy between the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data released its unemployment summary for the month of September on Friday and found that the country's overall unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 5.9 percent, the lowest the rate has been since July of 2008. Additionally, employers added approximately 248,000 jobs in the month. American Enterprise Institute resident scholar in...

There they the ones who aren't are exceptions. In fact, John Crudele is one of the exceptions. He had a story in the New York Post detailing how that 7.9% number was entirely made up. He did a column on how it was created, how it was artificially manufactured, and how they massaged it to make it 7.9%. He did a piece on how it was illegitimate, and he had been warning prior to the number how they were gonna do it. So he did a column detailing how they did it and so forth. But my guess is most...

A record 92,584,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in September, as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, a level it has not seen in 36 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. Six times in the last twelve months, the participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent; but September’s 62.7 percent is the lowest since February of 1978. The participation rate is the percentage of the civilian non-institutional population who participated in the labor force by either having a job or actively seeking one. Those not in...

In an odd coincidence, the last two election cycles have seen a drastic, unexpected drop in the unemployment rate immediately before the election. And in 2012 and 2010, the unemployment rate increased the month or the next after the election. Just as big a coincidence, both 2014 and 2012 saw the drop come in September, but reported in October, the best time to report supposed good news on the economy.

Northeast States: For an area that used to be a political powerhouse, it is becoming increasingly marginalized due to excessive taxes and the ensuing population shift I have written on this subject before, and now the affects of high taxes and population migration are playing out in a substantial, political way: the decline of about 40% of Congressional seats in the Northeast. According to the Census Bureau, high taxpayers are moving south. It notes that in the 11 states that comprise the Northeast, population grew at a rate of only 15% over the thirty year span from 1983-2013, while the...

A study published by the New York Federal Reserve found that the number of job openings rose by an estimated 20% in the six months following the lapse of the federal government's extended unemployment benefits. The lapse occurred because the Republican controlled House refused to vote to extend the benefits. Fatih Karahan, one of the authors of the study, cited the "mutually reinforcing effects of decreasing the burden on businesses to fund the benefits and decreasing the incentives of recipients to shun employment. If your tax burden of supporting benefits declines you can afford to hire more workers. Similarly, if...

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...

Advantage, Democrats — unless the 248,000 new jobs in September suddenly force Republicans to go on the offensive. I will explain in a second what the Republicans’ next move could be. But first, you may have read that the Labor Department on Friday, in its last jobs report before the mid-term elections, revealed that job growth and the unemployment rate both improved nicely in September — in fact, better than I expected. That’s going to make the Republican battle to take over the Senate a lot harder because issue No. 1 with Americans is the economy. Jobs = votes. In...

“So it is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office.” – President Obama, October 2, 2014 Eric Bolling disputes some of the President’s indisputable factsWhenever Big Guy pivots back to the economy, you can assume that the rest of the world is a messy, messy place indeed.So when BO returned to his “home town” of Chicago last week to raise money and mix with the little people at Bill and Giuliana Rancic’s tony RPM Steak and deliver an economy speech at Northwestern you can safely assume everything else is falling apart. Avoiding such hot...