Free Republic

President Trump is proud of the 3.9% unemployment rate, the lowest since 2000. But it’s not as great as it sounds. Employers added 164,000 jobs in April, which was lower than forecasts but still okay. Employers have created an average of 200,000 new jobs each month so far in 2018, which is a strong pace of job growth. But the unemployment rate, which fell from 4.1% to 3.9%, is a puzzlement. There were fewer people looking for jobs in April, which means fewer people counted as unemployed. When unemployment falls because people get jobs, that’s good. But when unemployment falls...

First-time claims for unemployment benefits fell to a 48-year low last week as the labor market shows further signs of tightening after years of steady growth. Claims plummeted to 209,000, a decrease of 24,000 in the week through April 21, from the previous week's 232,000, the lowest level since Dec. 6, 1969, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. The four-week moving average, a better gauge of the labor market's health, fell by 2,250 claims to 229,250. New York accounted for the bulk of the drop, with the number of claims in the state dropping 18,402. A tighter labor market is...

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits dropped to their lowest level in more than 48 years last week, suggesting that March's slowdown in job growth was probably temporary. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 209,000 for the week ended April 21, the lowest level since December 1969.

I heard a portion of Rush Limbaugh attacking Bernie Sanders' "solution" for jobs and heard Rush cite jobless stats as an indicator of "full employment."

Fourteen states have set new records for low unemployment rates in the last year, nearly a decade after the recession put millions of Americans out of work. The states hitting new unemployment lows run the ideological gamut, from conservative Texas to liberal California, suggesting a recovery stronger than any particular political persuasion. In March, eight states saw new record lows, including Hawaii (2.1 percent), Idaho (2.9 percent), Kentucky (4 percent ), Maine (2.7 percent), Mississippi (4.5 percent), Oregon (4.1 percent) and Wisconsin (2.9 percent). California also set a new record last month. The Golden State’s unemployment rate stands at 4.1...

Harvey. Illinois is in the midst of a financial crisis that represents the tip of the iceberg ... The city of 25,000 in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago is suffering from high unemployment (22%). An astonishing 32% of the population lives below the poverty level. This is a deadly mixture that has caused catastrophic shortfalls in revenue, leading to a crisis in funding pensions for the city's retired workers. Since state law prohibits municipal bankruptcy, Harvey has been forced into a situation Illinois has never seen. In February, the state began to garnish Harvey's revenue to fund its pension...

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits is running at the lowest level in 44 years, the Department of Labor reported Thursday. Altogether, 1.88 million people were receiving jobless benefits at the end of March. That was low enough to sent the monthly average for such claims down to 1.85 million, the lowest such mark since January of 1974, when the total workforce was much smaller. Unemployment benefits are available for up to 26 weeks in most states. During the worst of the recession, as many as 6.5 million workers were getting unemployment insurance. As for new claims for unemployment...

Technological progress has frequently resulted in changes in the nature of work, sometimes affecting skilled workers more and sometimes affecting unskilled workers more. But whichever categories of worker were affected, such changes have almost universally been to the benefit of workers of all skill levels. Let’s consider two or three professions of the past.Take the “tanner.” Before technology transformed the nature of such work, Wikipedia tells us that tanning “was considered a noxious or ‘odoriferous trade’ and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor… The ancient tanner might use his bare feet to knead the skins in dung...

Recent national economic reports point to a robust economic recovery. Employment is steadily increasing, and unemployment has fallen to a 17 year low. But obscured by the national averages are 52 million Americans still living in distressed communities, areas where poverty rates, unemployment, income, and business growth are far below the national averages. This economic recovery has been unusual with its geographic concentration. Research by the Economic Innovation Group shows that just 73 out of 3,000 counties produced more than half the job growth in the first five years after the recession. A mere five metro areas were responsible for...

* Private companies added 241,000 positions in March as employment in construction and manufacturing surged, according to ADP and Moody's Analytics. * The report was well ahead of Wall Street estimates for 205,000 growth and marked the fifth straight month that private payroll growth topped 200,000. * Service providers added 176,000 new jobs while goods-producing industries contributed 65,000. * "The job market is rip-roaring," says Mark Zandi, Moody's Analytics' chief economist. Companies kept up the hiring pace in March, adding 241,000 positions as employment in construction and manufacturing surged, according to a report Wednesday from ADP and Moody's Analytics. Economists...

Tax reform may not be generating the drumbeat of positive headlines that it once was, but the progress and successes it has created continue to pile up.  Walgreens has affirmed a $100 million investment in raising employees' wages thanks to the GOP-passed law, as McDonald's unveils new education benefits, also to the tune of nine figures, for its workers.  Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan is touting the decision of a smaller Maryland-based company that he visited last fall to offer tax reform bonuses of up to $1,000.  More than four million US workers have received such bonuses from their employers...

People living with disabilities, serious illness and the frailty of old age are bracing to lose caregivers due to changes in federal immigration policy. About 59,000 Haitians live in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian program that gave them permission to work and live here after the January 2010 earthquake devastated their country. Many work in health care, often in grueling, low-wage jobs as nursing assistants or home health aides. Now these workers’ days are numbered: The Trump administration decided to end TPS for Haitians. In Boston, the city with the third-highest Haitian population, the decision has...

The new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump have generated intense controversy. With the debate ongoing, it might be useful to examine how other countries have dealt with similar policy debates in the past. New Zealand now ranks third in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and is one of the champions of economic freedom around the world. But it wasn’t always so. In the mid-1980s, New Zealand was facing an economic crisis, with its domestic market and international trade both heavily regulated. Unemployment had reached 11 percent, and inflation was a sky-high 15 percent. In response, the government...

Four recent news stories caused me to think about the current political environment, and how we increasingly reframe news to fit our ideological understanding of the world. It seems that more and more, information means something totally different to people depending on their outlook – to the point that people with differing political positions can appear to be living in alternate realities. Consider how some might react to these four unrelated, recent events: 1. The Daily Caller reported on March 15 that 2 million Americans got off food stamps in President Trump’s first year. Citing a recent assessment by the...

Barring a recession, it appears the US is running out of people. We aren't. The chart is misleading. The Wall Street Journal asks Is America Running Out of Unemployed People to Fill Jobs? For every job opening in America, there’s now barely more than one unemployed person available to take it. In mid-2015, there were 2.3 million more unemployed people than open jobs. By January, the gap had narrowed to 372,000. Pool of Potential Workers There is a huge pool of workers as shown by the following Advisor Perspectives chart on the Labor Force Participation Rate. In every age group...

The U.S. isn’t just politically divided -- it’s also economically divided. New research says the two go hand-in-glove together. There are the haves and the have-nots. Increasingly, the red states, which tend to vote Republican, are trailing far behind the blue states, which tend to vote Democrat, according to a recently published study. Worse still, the divide is getting wider. This economic chasm helps explain president Trump’s rise to power, and why he could hold on to it longer than his detractors think possible. “Generally, red states or the red areas of the country are lagging blue areas for employment...

February job gains came in at a whopping 313,000 new jobs, so much that NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt acknowledged it “blows away economists’ expectations.” The Wall Street Journal said expectations were at only 205,000. Unemployment also remained at the 17-year-low of 4.1 percent. But only one network gave the good news any serious attention. February job gains came in at a whopping 313,000 new jobs, so much that NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt acknowledged it “blows away economists’ expectations.” The Wall Street Journal said expectations were at only 205,000. Unemployment also remained at the 17-year-low of 4.1...

Employment up! Unemployment down! (Unexpectedly.) Payrolls rose 313,000 in February, compared with the 205,000 median estimate in a survey of economists, and the two prior months were revised higher by 54,000, Labor Department figures showed Friday. Women and minorities hardest hit! Black, Hispanic unemployment hit historic lows: Just 6.9 percent of black adults were unemployed in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the second-lowest such ratio since the agency has been keeping track.Hispanic workers, too, are currently enjoying historically low rates of unemployment. At 4.9 percent in February, Hispanic unemployment is just a tenth of a percentage point...

The unemployment rate for black Americans fell back down to an historic low in February, after spiking up in January. Just 6.9 percent of black adults were unemployed in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the second-lowest such ratio since the agency has been keeping track. The low mark was set in December, at 6.8 percent. Then, the rate spiked to 7.7 percent, but that increase proved short-lived. President Trump has touted the fact that black unemployment has dipped so low on his watch, including during his State of the Union address. When the black jobless rate hit...

The U.S. economy did more than give jobs to 313,000 in February — it brought nearly three times that amount off the sidelines, where more than 95 million Americans still sit. Inside the glittering nonfarm payrolls report the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday were some even more inspiring numbers. Skilled labor positions surged with big increases in construction and manufacturing, which has seen its best three-month period since 1984. On a bigger-picture level, there was even more. The labor force surged by 806,000, the biggest move since September 2003, and now sits just below 162 million. That's due to...