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From an office suite on the 26th floor of the iconic Frost Bank Tower in Austin, Texas, a little-known recruiting firm called Crossover is searching the globe for software engineers. Crossover is looking for anyone who can commit to a 40- or 50-hour workweek, but it has no interest in full-time employees. It wants contract workers who are willing to toil from their homes or even in local cafes. “The best people in the world aren’t in your Zip code,” says Andy Tryba, chief executive of Crossover, in a promotional YouTube video. Which, Tryba emphasizes, also means you don’t have...

On a yearly basis, wages and salaries jumped 3.1 percent, the biggest increase in 10 years. Wage increases have been the missing link in the economy since the recovery began in mid-2008. Average hourly earnings have been rising steadily but have stayed below the 3 percent level as slack has remained in the labor market.

The Johnny Paycheck Index, more formally known as the quits rate — the number of quits for a month as a percent of total employment — in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), now stands at 2.4 — the highest level of the recovery to date. American workers are telling their bosses to “take this job and shove it” at the fastest rate since the pre-recession heights of the dot-com bubble. Since December 2016, the quits rate has increased by 0.4 points, an increase that required three-and-a-half years in the immediate aftermath of the recession. In July 2009,...

Since Donald Trump won the presidency, he has presided over both one the most tumultuous political times in recent memory, as well as the best economy the country has seen since well before the financial crisis. Consumer and small business confidence is up — but so are both the national debt and budget deficit. The chart below, using mostly data compiled by Goldman Sachs, quantifies just how much things changed from the days just before the election in November 2016 through September 2018. Of course, the stock market has weakened in October, which has been its historically most volatile month....

As the job market continues to tighten, more factories are turning to a recruiting tool they have been avoiding: money. Take Spectro Alloys Corp. in Rosemount, Minn. The aluminum recycling firm has upped its recruitment budget and raised starting pay nearly 10 percent —it even raffled off a new ATV to job applicants. "The hiring environment is extremely challenging right now," said Luke Palen, president of Spectro, which recently added 5,000 square feet and needs more workers to meet demand. "A hot market for recycled aluminum and even hotter local job market is forcing the Spectro team to think outside...

The benefits of a strong job market are spreading in the form of higher wages for many of those left behind for much of the past decade’s economic expansion, including young Americans, low-income households and people with the least education. The unemployment rate in September fell to 3.7%, its lowest level since 1969. That is creating worker shortages and wage gains, not just for high-skilled workers who tend to command the best pay but also for low-skilled and blue-collar workers whose wages lag behind. A study by The Conference Board this week showed shortages are now most acute in blue-collar...

Standard wage data show that between the spring of 2017 and the spring of 2018, real wages in the U.S. increased only 0.1%. But there are three major problems with these data. First, they don’t account for fringe benefits, which are an increasing proportion of employee pay. Second, standard wage data use an index that overstates the inflation rate. Third, each year the composition of the workforce changes, as older, higher-paid workers retire and young, lower-paid workers enter the workforce. A study released this month by the White House Council of Economic Advisers addresses these three biases and concludes that...

You want a high-paying gig, but without being tied down by a set schedule or a single job. Trouble is, you always thought part-time jobs paid little. Well, you thought wrong. The gig economy is out there, waiting for you. And the best news is: you don’t have to wait to have a college degree to get started raking in the dough. Here are several high-paying part-time jobs that could help you generate a fabulous annual salary when combined. 1. Social Media Assistant Put your Facebook skills to work helping companies manage their online profiles and marketing. You can get...

On a continuing basis, Democrats, including the media, are playing the race, sex and class cards while they pretend they want to unite the country.  One of the talking points is the bald-faced lie that CEOs make over 300 times the average worker and their pay is rising faster than the average worker. There are around 250,000 CEOs in the U.S., but somehow we only hear about the top few hundred. In 2005, the median worker made $46,242 and the average CEO made around four times that amount, or around $180,000. In 2017 the median worker made a record $61,372...

iring picked up in August and so did worker pay -- registering the fastest wage growth since 2009 in an encouraging sign that wages may finally be moving higher after years of sluggish gains. August was the 95th straight month the U.S. economy added jobs, with a robust 201,000 job gains, the Labor Department reported Friday, while wages for U.S. workers grew at 2.9 percent in the past year. The national unemployment rate remained at 3.9 percent, one of the lowest levels in half a century. The higher pay is a sign that businesses are having to compete hard for...

Lower-wage retail jobs in particular were among the big gainers as a tighter labor market forced employers to shell out a bit more. After a slow start to 2018 on the pay-raise front, workers in the United States are starting to benefit from the strong economy: Wages across all jobs climbed by 2.2% year over year in July, according to data provided by Glassdoor. "[This] is the fastest wage growth we've seen in more than a year," said Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain in an email. "As employers raise wages to hire amid low unemployment across the country, it's a...

I'm looking for the average hourly wage (or yearly income of wages over time. Preferred by decade. Like 1950, 1960 and so on. All I can find is household income. That's that what I want as that doesn't tell what wages are. I mean the number of women working has changed over time. If anyone has a link or knows how to use google better than me I'd appreciate it. When I search I just get household income.

New York Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez portrays herself as "a normal, working person," but one of her positions may have helped 150 people lose their jobs. After enduring mockery for declaring Sunday that a walk in a national park was an example of democratic socialism, Ocasio-Cortez lamented Monday the shutting down of an iconic New York coffee shop that closed mostly due to a higher minimum wage – which Ocasio-Cortez supported. **SNIP** But unlike what Ocasio-Cortez wants you to believe about the closing down, it wasn’t the result of greedy capitalists trying to squeeze the workers, but rather government regulations...

This morning, the Labor Department announced that the national unemployment rate ticked up to 4 percent in June for good reasons, as hundreds of thousands more Americans sought work. For the first time in recorded history, the number of job openings is higher than the number of people looking for a job. That has raised hopes that wage growth might finally begin to pick up, with employers bidding more to attract new workers and offering raises to retain their existing staff. Full employment — that magical economic state, in which everyone who wants work has it, and at a good...

Democrats seem to agree: A job guarantee will be part of the 2020 election debate. What they don't yet agree on is what a "job guarantee" is. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is working on a full blown national bill to enshrine the right to a job. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has a bill that would essentially run a test pilot of Sanders' program. The Congressional Full Employment Caucus has been pushing yet another national job guarantee bill, with some differences from Sanders' plan, for years. Finally, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) just introduced his own bill, which would subsidize more private...

How much is unskilled labor worth? For liberals, you might think the answer is an astronomical $15 an hour, the minimum wage many states have set, destroying jobs that cannot provide that much value. But for libs, $15 an hour is just the starting point. The Atlantic wrote a sob story about someone who took a part time job delivering packages for Amazon for $18 an hour (which would eventually go up to $25). Her anger, and indignation, explains what is wrong about the liberal entitlement mentality. The Amazon Flex program lets workers deliver packages as independent contractors. They can...

The Trump economy is booming. Employers added 223,000 jobs in May instead of an expected 188,000. Unemployment is at a historic 3.8 percent, as low as it’s been since last century, and consumer confidence is skyrocketing right along with GDP. And for the first time in a long time, there are more jobs available than people to fill them."President Trump’s policies are having a tremendous positive impact on the lives of Americans of all classes and backgrounds," wrote Andy Puzder for Fox Business. "More people are working, there are more job openings, and fewer people are dependent on government. Good news for...

Whatever teen anti-gun celebrity David Hogg learned in high school, it apparently wasn’t the English language. It’s that, or he actually wants to increase the number of gun deaths in inner-city communities. Either way, the poster boy for the gun-grabbing left is showing all the world just how confused and ignorant he really is. In recent a Twitter exchange with a conservative commentator, Hogg let his ignorance slip with a colossally nonsensical argument for the left’s favorite economic policy: Raising the minimum wage.

A number of months ago, when Republicans' collective 2018 fate was looking fairly bleak, I attended an off-the-record briefing that reviewed internal party polling, highlighting the party's strengths and weaknesses heading into a challenging midterms.  The political headwinds, as they're often referred to, were blowing against Team Red -- based both on historical precedent and measurable electoral outcomes.  Many of those same obstacles remain firmly in place today.  But two of the bright spots that the assembled GOP gurus underscored were (a) the growing strength of the US economy, thanks to tax reform and other policies, and (b) the polarizing unpopularity of...

The Permian basin is on fire, and the current boom cycle in its oil industry is posing an interesting challenge that area in Texas: Right now, that challenge is a shortage of oil industry workers. The oil industry, in an attempt to keep up with increased oil production—particularly in the Permian Basin, is one-upping other employers in a mad dash to reclaim enough workers to keep the industry awash with oil. In fact, as the Dallas News pointed out on Wednesday, the industry is throwing double pay to woo workers away from other industries, such as school bus drivers, police...