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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.

California lawmakers and union leaders have reached a tentative deal to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is expected to make the formal announcement as early as Monday. According to the L.A. Times, the minimum wage will jump from $10 to $10.50 an hour in 2017 and will increase by $1 every year after that until reaching $15 an hour in 2022. Business with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to comply. "The governor and stakeholders have all been negotiating...

The official U.S. unemployment rate is 5.1% -- the lowest in seven years -- but Donald Trump calls that a "joke." On Monday, he claimed he'd seen numbers that show America's real unemployment rate is as high as 42%. How does he arrive at such a wild figure? Trump appears to be looking at the number of American adults not working. Period. Out of about 251 million American adults, roughly 102 million -- or 40.6% -- aren't working. But, of course, there are a lot of reasons people don't work. They could be disabled, in college, at home raising kids...

At Trump Tower, only a few blocks away from the meeting of world leaders at the United Nations, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump announced his new plan to reform the U.S. tax code. After the main announcement, he took questions from the press. On how his plan would address income inequality: TRUMP: In terms of income inequality, we're going to create a lot of jobs. You know, right now we have a false [unemployment rate] 5.4%, 5.3%, 5.6%, every month it is different. It is such a phony number. Because when people look and look and look and then they...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump clearly prides himself in shunning focus-group research. He refuses big campaign donations that he asserts make his opponents beholden to special interests. He seems to target no specific constituency. Many pollsters remain puzzled by Trump’s political appeal. “Republican support for Donald Trump just continues to grow,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth Polling after its August survey, “with no clear sense of who his constituency really is.” Yet a constituency is emerging. Trump’s strongest supporters, roughly a quarter of Republican voters across the polls, are not dissuaded by any increased media scrutiny of their candidate....

Donald Trump Claims The 'Real' Unemployment Rate Is 18%. Here's What Wall Street Says.After Donald Trump announced his latest bid for the presidency, I reached out to get details on Trump’s plan to replace Obamacare, and posted that interview on FORBES last week. But for many FORBES readers, the most eye-catching part of the interview wasn’t Trump’s plan for health care. It was what the Trump campaign said about unemployment. “Mr. Trump believes that the real unemployment rate is over 18%, not the reported 5.5%,” a spokesperson told me. Trump’s distrust of the government’s job statistics isn’t new. In July,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week and job cuts declined sharply in December, suggesting the labor market is tightening. Thursday's reports support views of faster growth this year, driven by consumer spending, despite a faltering global economy. "Labor market conditions continue to improve, providing support for consumers and contributing to a virtuous cycle for the economy," said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 294,000 for the week ended Jan. 3,...

4 Factors Weighing On Labor Markets—And Implications For Fed Policy (Part 1 of 5) Labor markets are weaker than they appear, leading the Fed toward continued accommodative monetary policy. Still, the central bank may find that weakness difficult to overcome, as much of it stems from serious long-term issues and not merely short-term lack of demand. In recent posts, my colleague Russ Koesterich outlined why the U.S. labor market recovery will continue to frustrate the Fed, and Jeff Rosenberg examined one key reason why the central bank is set to keep rates low for some time. I agree with these...

Another month, another attempt by the BLS to mask the collapse in the US labor force with a goalseeked seasonally-adjusted surge in waiter, bartender and other low-paying jobs. Case in point: after a modest rebound by 0.1% in November, the labor participation rate just slid once more, dropping to 62.7%, or the lowest print since December 1977. This happened because the number of Americans not in the labor forced soared by 451,000 in December, far outpacing the 111,000 jobs added according to the Household Survey, and is the primary reason why the number of uenmployed Americans dropped by 383,000. And...

WASHINGTON -- The United States capped its best year for hiring in 15 years with a healthy gain in December, and the unemployment rate hit a six-year low. The numbers support expectations that the United States will strengthen further this year even as overseas economies stumble. The Labor Department said today that employers added 252,000 jobs last month and 50,000 more in October and November combined than it had previously estimated. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent from 5.8 percent in November. The rate is at its lowest point since 2008. Yet wage growth remains weak. Average hourly pay...

The U.S. economy added 252,000 jobs in December, sending the unemployment rate down to 5.6%. The latest jobs numbers continue a streak of strong economic growth, which has seen the unemployment rate drop 0.2 points in the last two months alone.

On the heels to two so-so jobs reports—one from the government, one from ADP-- the spotlight remains firmly on the non-jobs recovery that Obama and the Democrats were successfully able to cover up for six years. The government reported jobs growth of 214,000 jobs for the month of October this week. While the number is okay, it is nowhere near what is needed to heal the wounds to the labor market.As our own Peter Morici observed:The official jobless rate is 5.8 percent, down from its recession peak of 10 percent, but that has been mostly accomplished by encouraging prime working-aged...

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.

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...

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. This comes on the heels of this election cycle's surprise news that the unemployment rate decreased .2% to 5.9%., a mere two months after the unemployment rose to 6.2%. For...

America's unemployment rate as measured by the Labor Department vastly underrepresents the number of Americans actually out of work, hedge fund manager Kyle Bass told CNBC. Earlier this month, the government said the nation's unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent in August, while job growth cooled with just 142,000 nonfarm payrolls added. "Look at unemployment, the way it's calculated is it's semi-rigged," he argued in a "Squawk Box" interview. "It will trend down to the 5 percent range just because people stop looking for a job." "If you take everyone that has dropped out of the workforce since the beginning...

div class="content">Interested why despite the euphoric headline NFP print, a cursory glance deeper inside the payrolls report reveals weakness after weakness, with both participation plunging again and wages the worst since last summer? Here is the answer: 4 of the top 5 largest job additions in September, retail trade, leisure and hospitality, education and health and temp help, were of the lowest quality, and paying, jobs possible. So yes, America added a whole lot of minimum wage waiters, store clerks, groundskeepers and temps: truly the stuff New Normal "recoveries" are made of.

Economy In Crisis: A new study by the Illinois Policy Institute shows in the past four years, the number of new food-stamp recipients in the state has outpaced new jobs nearly 2-to-1. Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, locked in a tight re-election battle with self-made billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner, has been arguing that Illinois, arguably the bluest of blue states, has turned the fiscal corner and is on its way back. The recovery may be slower than Quinn wants it to be — but, he says, it is real. It is an odd recovery, though, that makes more people dependent...

The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to the lowest level since mid-July, fuelling optimism over the strength of the labor market, official data showed on Thursday. In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending September 13 decreased by 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 280,000 from the previous week’s revised total of 316,000. Analysts had expected jobless claims to fall by 11,000 to 305,000 last week. Continuing jobless claims in the week ended September 6 fell to 2.429...

<p>The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, suggesting an acceleration in job growth in September.</p> <p>Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 293,000 for the week ended Sept.20, the Labor Department said on Thursday.</p>