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Yesterday was a bad economic news day … and today continues the trend. Housing starts fell, initial jobless claims rose and “inflation” fell. May 16 (Bloomberg) — Starts of new homes in the U.S. fell more than forecast in April to a five-month low, indicating a pause in the industry’s progress as builders slowed work on apartments. Building permits surged to an almost five-year high. Housing starts slumped 16.45 percent, the most since February 2011, to an 853,000 annualized rate after a revised 1.02 million pace in March. The real jolt is the decline in multifamily starts of -37.77% for...

Retailers are cutting worker hours at a rate not seen in more than three decades — a sudden shift that can only be explained by the onset of ObamaCare's employer mandates. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/economy/050313-654674-retail-workweek-3-year-low-on-obamacare.htm#ixzz2Sd5AKiY6 Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

The US Economy Is The Envy Of The World Again, And Just Like That The Bears Have Been Annihilated Joe WeisenthalMay 7, 2013, 4:44 AMJust two and a half weeks ago, the bears were starting to feel good. Markets around the world seemed to be rolling over. Commodities were falling. People were talking about deflation. And then, the market turned, and then we got Friday's strong jobs report. Now the market is back to making new highs again, and the market bears are crushed. A new note from Olivier Korber at SocGen is titled "US payrolls annihilated 'sell in May.'"...

We lost 148,000 full time jobs last month, despite media accounts that said the jobs report was “strong,� or a “sign of recovery�.  And we can pin most of the losses on Obamacare. Were it not for the implementation this year of the national healthcare law that penalizes companies that hire full-time employees, this job market would be a lot better. Fortunately, while the market celebrated the anemic jobs report and the media reported on what they termed a “strong� jobs report, some of us actually read the jobs report. And what we read wasn’t all that great, even if...

<p>Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.</p> <p>Bad News! It had to be helped by a 193,000 increase due to the BLS Birth/Death adjustment. That is a net LOSS of 28,000 jobs! And 9.55 million Americans have given up looking for work. Not to mention 89,936,000 NOT in the labor force.</p>

<p>Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.</p> <p>Bad News! It had to be helped by a 193,000 increase due to the BLS Birth/Death adjustment. That is a net LOSS of 28,000 jobs! And 9.55 million Americans have given up looking for work. Not to mention 89,936,000 NOT in the labor force.</p>

Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%. Bad News! It had to be helped by a 193,000 increase due to the BLS Birth/Death adjustment. May 3 (Bloomberg) — Employment picked up more than forecast in April and the jobless rate unexpectedly declined to a four-year low of 7.5 percent, showing federal budget cuts failed to destabilize the U.S. labor market. Payrolls expanded by 165,000 workers last month following a revised 138,000 increase in March that was larger than first estimated. The median forecast of 90 economists projected a 140,000 gain. Revisions added a...

<p>Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.</p> <p>But I thought the Sequester would destroy employment? Apparently not. The Administration’s Sequester Scare tactics failed.</p>

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The April employment report exceeded expectations, with 165,000 jobs created and a welcome drop in the unemployment rate to 7.5%. But there was a dark side to the report: Total hours worked fell sharply, and the total amount of money earned by U.S. workers actually declined from the month before.“Aggregate weekly hours”....As the name implies, it measures the total number of hours worked, which is what matters for sizing up overall growth in the economy. Usually, we focus just on the number of new jobs created and the unemployment rate, but the number of hours we work...

It's been said that if you're not growing, you're dying. Well, that seems true when it comes to careers, too. Unfortunately, in today's fast-paced, technology-driven world, sometimes it's hard to predict which jobs will be winners and which will be losers. But understanding the likely trajectory of your chosen field will be crucial to your professional success. "People need to ensure that they're in an industry, or working to enter one, that has long-term potential and security," says Debra Wheatman, a certified professional career coach and president of Careers Done Write. She says that if you're not careful, you could...

With the March Payroll number printing at a miserable 88K compared to ADP's 158K print, it was only a matter of time before Mark Zandi, still furious from getting the news he won't be the next GSE Tzar, revised the last month's data to 131K as he just did. Concurrently he also announced that the just released April ADP was a huge miss to expectations of 150K, printing at just 119K, or a 31K miss. This was the 5th month in a row of declines excluding the small bounce in February data. It also means that the combined miss to...

Last August, in the midst of an overheated campaign season in Texas and a scorching summer drought, Lubbock County Judge Tom Head appeared on local television to vent. He was worried about the consequences of re-electing Barack Obama. "He is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N.," Judge Head warned, imagining a physical confrontation with blue-helmeted peacekeepers. "I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carriers and say, 'You're not coming in here.' " The U.N. seized on this fiasco to poke some fun: "No one, not even the United...

Way to go, Peach State! Gov. Nathan Deal yesterday signed S.B. 160 - a tough expansion of Georgia's H.B. 87, the Arizona-style law cracking down on illegal aliens, which passed in 2011. The La Raza lobby was left stunned and upset, believing Deal would bend to the prevailing GOP pressure for immigration appeasement in Washington, and veto it. They were sadly mistaken. Passed in the final hours of the General Assembly’s 40-day session - and despite fierce lobbying against it by ethnic intimidation groups, big business interests, and the ACLU - Senate Bill 160 was created to "fix" problems in licensing...

Laugh all you want about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's campaign to recruit businesses from Illinois to the Lone Star State. We don't know whether Perry will succeed in prompting a commercial exodus from the Land of Lincoln to the land of droughts, fire ants and deadly fertilizer-plant explosions. Yet Perry's stunt is another serious wake-up call for Illinois politicians and the inhospitable business climate they've created. Perry can boast to Illinois business leaders of a Texas unemployment rate that has fallen to 6.4 percent. That's an excellent barometer of his state's economic health. By contrast, the unemployment rate in Illinois...

Pete Rossi can count on one hand the number of weeks out of the year that he works more than 50 hours. But the rest of the year, his job as an actuary with the Department of Defense, provides a good living with a minimum of stress. That partly explains why actuaries have the best job in the United States, according to a new survey by CareerCast.com that will be released Tuesday. Biomedical engineer was No. 2 and software engineer, the top job of 2012, came in at No.3. Careers that ranked the lowest included enlisted military personnel, lumberjack and...

CHICAGO — Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave Rick Perry a Chicago-style greeting Monday, challenging the Texas governor to remember the reasons for his visit to Illinois — a jab at Perry's presidential debate forgetfulness. "I hope when he comes he remembers all three of his reasons," Emanuel said. "Because it will be a real test for him." Perry was in Illinois Monday to encourage businesses to move to Texas and was scheduled to address a Chicago business convention Tuesday. Emanuel made pointed reference to a campaign gaffe Perry committed while running for president. At a Republican debate late in 2011, Perry...

Obamacare's War On Full-Time Jobs Will Sucker Punch Economy Politics / EmploymentApril 19, 2013 - 12:12 PM GMTDavid Zeiler By: Money Morning David Zeiler writes: Obamacare's rules regarding hours worked and employer-sponsored healthcare coverage have entire industries looking at cutting down on their number of full-time employees in favor of more part-time employees. Large industries affected include hotels, restaurants and retailers, as well as small businesses of all stripes. In essence, the hefty financial burden imposed by Obamacare for having too many full-time employees is creating a huge incentive for many employers to cut workers' hours, or, in some cases,...

US Macro data points to a cooling off of the economy. We already know about Europe’s ongoing decline. But even China is slowing down (but down to 7.7%!) And the US is showing slowdown as well. The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators for the US fell to -0.1% in March from 0.5% in February (analysts were expecting a slowdown, but only to +0.1%. The Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey was expected to rise to +3.0 for April, but fell instead to 1.3 from a March reading of 2.0. Initial jobless claims rose for the week of April 13 to 352,000....

The National Council on Aging (NCOA) today launched JobSource, a new online portal to help older adults assess their work skills, identify job training opportunities, and find employment. Last month, 1.8 million adults aged 55+ were actively seeking employment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly half of older workers looking for jobs have been without employment for over a year. “For many older Americans, employment is necessary to remain financially secure, healthy, and independent,” said Nora Dowd Eisenhower, senior vice president of economic security at NCOA. “But as industries and workplaces evolve, it is vital that older adults...

In one of his more well-publicized gaffes, Vice President Biden said of John McCain: "Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs." Actually, of course, it's a four-letter word, and it was his job and the president's to create a climate for job expansion, and they failed. The evidence is now overwhelming: they have created the worst employment climate in decades. Tyler Durden at Zerohedge sums up the week's bad economic news: Things just keep getting worse for...

Trying to figure out what the “official” unemployment rate means can be very frustrating. Much of what we hear is complex and counter intuitive. The numbers seem inconsistent with what people are experiencing and many people are simply losing interest. We hear about growth in the non-institutional population, a decline in the labor participation rate, people who are unemployed and want a job not being counted as unemployed just because they haven’t looked for a job in 30 days, and people who are working part time because they are unable to find full time employment being counted as fully employed....

Almost as many people signed up with the federal government's permanent worker disability program as got jobs in March, according to two sets of government data, continuing a troubling trend throughout the Obama recovery. Last month, 81,804 workers left the workforce to join the Social Security Disability Insurance program. So far this year, nearly a quarter million workers have joined the program. Over the past four years, 4 million left the workforce to go on disability. Even after accounting for those who dropped out of the program because of death or retirement, the ranks of the disabled have shot up...

I am speaking to a group in Dallas on Monday on the housing market, specifically any headwinds to a full recovery. Today’s jobs numbers illustrate the headwinds to an economic and housing recovery. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), nonfarm payroll employment edged up in March (+88,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent. That is the good news. The bad news? The number of people not in the labor force which in March skyrocketed by 663,000 to a record 90 million. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor...

Bank of America said today it’s cutting 469 jobs from its mortgage servicing center in Newark as the number of homeowners delinquent on mortgage payments dwindles. Employees at the offices on the corner of Market Street and University Avenue were given the news last week. “We previously announced intentions to reduce the size of our mortgage servicing operations in line with the successful reduction of our portfolio of delinquent mortgage customers,” the bank said in an e-mailed statement last night. “Compared to peak levels in 2011, today we have fewer than half the number of customers who need the specialized...

Gov. Rick Perry speaks wistfully — almost lovingly — about a rifle he recently fired while he was at a range in Leander owned by the manufacturer LaRue Tactical. “I’m incredibly passionate about a well-made piece of equipment,” Mr. Perry said in a phone interview last week, “whether it’s an automobile or a weapon.” After the visit, LaRue posted Mr. Perry’s results online. From 100 yards away, the governor took three shots and grouped them — two shots hit the same spot — mere millimeters from the center of the target. “That was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Mr. Perry said,...

LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany — The sprawling chemical plant in this city along the Rhine River has been a jewel of Germany’s manufacturing-led economy for more than a century. But the plunging price of natural gas in the United States has European companies setting sail across the Atlantic to stay competitive. German chemicals giant BASF, which operates the plant here, has announced plans for wide-ranging expansion in the United States, where natural gas prices have fallen to a quarter of those in Europe, largely because of American innovations in unlocking shale gas. Among those most affected are energy-intensive industries such as steel...

An important premise of “The American Dream” is that a college education guarantees a successful career. However, that dream is slipping away — unless being a coffee shop barista is the job goal. Ben Casselman of the Wall Street Journal takes a look at a recent job report for the latest crop of college graduates, which has some concerning numbers (hat-tip, a tweet from Iowahawkblog’s David Burge). 284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012. The Wall Street Journal this week reported on the troubling trend of college graduates getting stuck in low-skilled jobs, a problem...

You get a lot of sad news here, I know. I might have some good news for a change. Say, might. We must cross our fingers first. We've been talking a lot in this space over the last few months about the staggering number of people in the city who are deemed "outside the labor force" by federal numbers keepers, as many as 60 percent of people in some southern Dallas census reporting tracts. That is, they didn't have a job yesterday; they're not looking for a job today; they're not going to get a job tomorrow. A connecting thread...

The Department of Labor estimates that some three million Americans with Bachelor degrees work in jobs that don’t require an education at all–janitors, barristas, bartenders and retail clerks.There are a lot of obvious reasons why junior is now living in your basement at age 25.

The assumption by everyone except committed ObamaBots is that ObamaCare will depress new hires as employers try to stay below the 50 employee limit that triggers their participation in this program. But in a perverse way it could have the opposite effect. It could actually increase hiring … of part time employees. This is not good for either employees or employers, but it could make the unemployment numbers look better as the unemployed become the partially-employed, and the full-timers become part-timers. What started this train of thought was the picture of a woman with the word “Juicy” emblazoned on her...

Maryuri Aguilar received an unexpected bill in the mail for $900. The return address came from Indiana Department of Workforce Development. The bill claims the 26-year-old received unemployment benefits while employed for a company in Carmel. The problem with the claim is Aguilar doesn’t work in Carmel. In fact, she is currently looking for work. Aguilar speaks little English, however, she filed a police report hoping to clear her name and reinstate her benefits. “That is awful I can’t believe people would do that,” said an employed Executive Assistant Karen Stein. Cases like Aguilar's happen quite often. According to a...

I'm Free! And no longer being paid...so eventually I'll have to indenture myself to some other master. No worries; my real boss is a Jewish carpenter, and He'll never lay me off.

A handful of specialized retailers that cater to highly selective outdoor and gun enthusiasts have defied the general retail downturn by posting strong sales over the past several years. While recent media coverage and interest in guns has driven sales of guns and ammunition higher, these specialty retailers had reported strong sales long before the tragic and senseless events brought added attention to the sector. So much so that these sporting gun stores report sales are stronger now than ever. From a commercial real estate perspective, the popular sporting gun retailers are attracting interest from owners of empty so-called big...

Indiana Gov. Pence joined GEICO Chairman Tony Nicely to announce the company’s plans to locate a customer service center in the Indianapolis metropolitan area, creating up to 1,200 new jobs by 2016. The Washington, DC-based auto insurer will invest millions of dollars to lease, renovate and equip 109,000 square feet of space in the area. The new office, which is expected to be operational by late April, will house professional insurance agents, their training and supervisory teams and additional management and support staff. --snip-- The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered GEICO up to $10,000,000 in conditional tax credits and up...

WILLISTON, N.D. — — He dropped out of north suburban Richmond-Burton Community High School, and a few years later Andy Turco found himself staining decks in the summer, plowing snow in the winter and going without work for a month or two in between. Nearly homeless, he saw himself on a dead-end path. Then he talked to a buddy working here, in a barren corner of North Dakota, where an ugly-sounding word — fracking — has driven oil from the ground and pushed unemployment down to 0.7 percent. That's right: seven-tenths of one percent. Turco sold his car, hopped in...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gathered on Wednesday at a hearing of the health subcommittee to discuss the effects of the Affordable Care Act on jobs. As a witness at the hearing, chaired by Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts, I testified that the new law will reduce employment in America, particularly for low-skill workers, because employers face a higher cost of labor. Whenever possible, firms will substitute high-skill for low-skill labor, part-time for full-time workers, machinery for people, and refrain from hiring a 50th worker, which can make them liable for penalties. Full-time hiring will...

by John HillStand With ArizonaWebsite | Facebook | Twitter Recent Border Patrol data suggest that the traffic flow of illegal alien across our Southern border may be starting to shift away from Arizona and towards Texas. Maricopa County's Sheriff may be a big reason illegal aliens are increasingly avoiding the Grand Canyon State. Last week Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies smashed a big human smuggling ring that brought thousands of illegal aliens in and through Arizona over the past 4 years - but won't anymore. Arpaio leads the 3rd largest Sheriff's Department in the United States, and - in stark contrast...

Commentary: Mandating health care will hurt workersWASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gathered on Wednesday at a hearing of the health subcommittee to discuss the effects of the Affordable Care Act on jobs. As a witness at the hearing, chaired by Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts, I testified that the new law will reduce employment in America, particularly for low-skill workers, because employers face a higher cost of labor. Whenever possible, firms will substitute high-skill for low-skill labor, part-time for full-time workers, machinery for people, and refrain from hiring a 50th worker, which can make them...

The good news: Initial jobless claims declined to 332,000 for the most recent week ending March 9. The expectations were for an increase to 350,000. The bad news: Initial jobless claims are back to where we were in March 2012. Remember, there are still 12,032,000 unemployment people in the USA. And we are back to the peak of the Carter-era recession. Continuing jobless claims fell as well. But this time it is back to the end of March 2012 levels. In terms of occupational growth rates, mid-wage growth remains negative leaving growth in only high-wage and low-wage occupations. Ah, the...

But the most surprising development in February from a quality standpoint was that the number of multiple job-holders rose by a massive 340K, which just happens to be a record...

The headlines on employment were joyous this morning. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7% and the U6 unemployment rate fell to 14.3% (still WAY too high). Nonfarm payrolls rose 236,000 while private payrolls rose 246,000. But if we get down to the real nitty gritty of the numbers, you can see that full-time workers actually FELL while part-time workers ROSE. Even more telling, the number of multiple job holders rose and increased as a percent of total employed to 5.2%. Of course, this substitution of full-time for part-time workers is partly due to onerous Obamacare taxes that apply to full-time...

Another day in a Fed-induced zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) world with the Federal government taxing and regulating like there is no tomorrow. Obamacare taxes and regualtions, withholding tax increases, EPA regulations (remember when Ping golf clubs proudly has a Made in USA label? – no mas.) The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort index improved to its highest point this year! Unfortunately, we are back to 2008 levels. Initial jobless claims declined to 340,000, greater than the expectation. Jobless claims are improving and are back to 2007 levels. On the other hand, Challenger job cuts announcements (YoY) rose +7.0%. The reaction in markets?...

We think of the iconic images of the Great Depression as representative of a uniquely miserable period, long vanished from American history. The bread lines and soup kitchens of those abnormal times have gone. So, too, has the sight of thousands of men (there were very few women among them then) waiting all day outside a factory in a forlorn quest for work. But they're there still, in the many millions across the country—little changed in their total since the 1930s: 12.3 million today are fully unemployed, compared to 12.8 million in 1933 at the depth of the depression. The...

UBS: Today's Positive GDP Report Was WORSE Than Last Month's Negative GDP Report Matthew BoeslerFebruary 28, 2013The BEA just released its second estimate of U.S. fourth quarter GDP. Total output expanded 0.5 percent – a marked increase over the initial estimate, which showed a 0.1 percent contraction in the U.S. economy. However, personal consumption growth, which clocked in at 2.2 percent in the initial estimate and was expected to rise to 2.3 percent in today's release, actually slowed to 2.1 percent. UBS economist Drew Matus was just on CNBC following the release. Matus said he would have preferred the initial...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, suggesting some traction in the labor market recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 344,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's claims figure was revised to show 4,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to fall to 360,000. Claims have seen large swings in recent months because of difficulties smoothing the data for seasonal fluctuations, making it hard to get a clear pulse of the labor market's...

57 Terrible Consequences Of The Sequester By CHRIS GOOD (@c_good) February 21, 2013 If the heads of 20 federal agencies are to be believed, disastrous consequences await if President Obama and Congress fail to reach a budget deal, triggering the automatic, across-the-board cuts known as "sequestration." Those cuts are slated to begin March 1, and earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations Committee asked agency heads to explain what would happen in such a scenario. In separate letters to Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., they warned of terrible things: Greater risk of wildfires, fewer OSHA inspections and a risk of more...

The Rise in Part Time Employment since the Great Recession- By: Larry Walker, Jr. -There are five categories among all nonagricultural workers who are officially counted as employed: government workers, private household and private industry workers, the self-employed and unpaid family workers. Among them there are three additional status classifications: those employed part time for economic reasons, part time for noneconomic reasons, and those employed full-time. An analysis of recent trends reveals that the number of part time workers is on the increase, while the number of full-time workers is on the decline.Before we begin, the aforementioned status classifications...

I am almost afraid to ask students (or my in-laws) what they think of President Obama’s State of the Union plea for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00. I will ask my students this week, but not my in-laws (I already know their answer – YES!). The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the minimum wage and its impact on employment. While raising the minimum wage sounds “fair,” it is really grossly unfair. University of California at Irvine economist David Neumark has looked at more than 100 major academic studies on the minimum wage, and he...

I was watching former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on CNBC’s Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo on Friday. Greenspan seemed to be saying that the stock market is what is important, not the underlying economy. Since the S&P 500 bottomed on 2009-07-07, it has risen from 881.03 to 1521.38 on Friday. That is a 73% increase. But please find the hidden economic recovery in the data supporting this miraculous stock market recovery. Industrial production in YoY terms is displaying a disturbing down trend in growth. U6 unemployment is shaped like a sea serpent and still remains at 14.4%, far too high...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s newly updated hiring regulations pose dilemmas for firms on the matter of hiring ex-convicts. On the one hand, businesses are warned that refusal to hire ex-cons will expose the firm to charges of racial discrimination. On the other hand, businesses would still be liable for any crimes committed by their employees. Jacqueline Berrien, Chairwoman of the EEOC defended the new rules as “necessary to level the playing field. Given that African-Americans are seven times more likely to have served time in prison, a hiring policy that attempts to screen out felons would have a racially...