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The most quoted jobs metric in the world is misleading Many of the truly unemployed are considered self-employed About 3 billion people who want a great job don't have one What the whole world wants is a good job. That was the breakthrough finding from Gallup's first global survey 10 years ago, and it continues to be true. However, there is a problem with how the world defines and measures what a good job is... [snip] How Global Agencies Define Work Here is the heart of the problem... [snip] Global_employment Let's consider a real job or a good job --...

Every day brings new headlines, ignored by the Washington press corps, of U.S. workers losing their livelihoods to cheap H1-B visa replacements. Just this week, Computerworld reported: "Fury and fear in Ohio as IT jobs go to India." Yet, it remains an article of faith among Big Business flacks and Beltway hacks that H-1B not only protects American jobs, but also fuels miraculous job growth. The myths are recycled and regurgitated by the likes of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who claims that "foreign-born STEM workers complement the American workforce, they don't take American jobs." Bill Gates, citing the National Foundation...

We received considerable feedback on our article last week about Walmart’s Project Greenlight. To be clear, nobody is suggesting that Walmart should be boycotted, we do not believe Veterans should be “offended” by people putting up green lights and we are not questioning the fact that Walmart does give a considerable amount of money for Veteran issues. However, unfortunately, the problem of Veteran Unemployment will not be resolved by re-branding the yellow ribbon campaign or by coining a new phrase such as “greenlighting.” So, today’s article we will dive a little deeper into the issues affecting Veteran Employment. The Reality...

On Monday, President Obama is announcing a new order to reduce potential discrimination against former convicts in the hiring process for federal government employees. It is a step towards what many criminal justice reformers call "ban the box" - the effort to eliminate requirements that job applicants check a box on their applications if they have a criminal record. While the rule was once seen as a common sense way for employers to screen for criminal backgrounds, it has been increasingly criticized as a hurdle that fosters employment discrimination against former inmates, regardless of the severity of their offense or...

“We’re feeling a little bit of the tightness in the market,” said Tim Grace, the global chief talent officer for Toys “R” Us. Mr. Grace said the retailer is on track to meet its goal of hiring 40,000 seasonal workers, but added that “we are not getting as many applicants as we have in the past.” With unemployment at a seven-year low, hourly retail work is becoming less attractive to job seekers who now have more options. The number of people employed part-time for economic reasons—those who want to work full-time but can only get a part-time job—has shrunk by...

On The Laura Ingraham Show, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) refused to say whether he supports curbing immigration levels. Jordan cited concerns of employers that the United States may need more workers because too many Americans are on drugs. “I hear from all kinds of employers, they say they can’t find people to work,” Jordan said, “And one of the reasons they cite… is that there’s a number of people who can’t pass the drug screen.”

Akin OyedeleOctober 31, 2015We recently detailed why some economists are spooked about the economy. Harvard professor Larry Summers also noted that the consensus of economists has failed to forecast a recession one year in advance in post-war America. So, once again, we may not know for sure until we are really close to an economic downturn, or even in one. However, it doesn't exactly look like we're there. If you were, however, trying to build a case that we're near recession, the manufacturing sector is where you'd start. It's A Services Economy "We are seeing questions come up as to...

Analysis: With $15 minimum wage campaign gaining political traction, group says workers need more for a living wage. As the nationwide campaign for a $15 hourly minimum wage gains traction, some labor groups have set their sights on an even higher number: $16.87 — a demand that could help push the $15 figure closer to the mainstream of American politics. A new report, published Tuesday, from the Alliance for a Just Society, a coalition of labor organizations, argues that $15 an hour is less than a living wage in most states. A single, childless adult earning $15 per hour would...

Minimum-wage jobs are meant to be the first rung on a career ladder, a chance for entry-level workers to prove themselves before earning a promotion or moving on to other, better-paying jobs. But a growing number of Americans are getting stuck on that first rung for years, if they ever move up at all. Anthony Kemp is one of them. In 2006, he took a job as a cook at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Oak Park, Illinois. The job paid the state minimum wage, $6.50 an hour at the time, but Kemp figured he could work his way up....

The federal government uses very carefully manipulated numbers to cover up the crushing economic depression that is going on in this nation. For the month of September, the federal government told us that 142,000 jobs were added to the economy. If that was actually true, that would barely be enough to keep up with population growth. Sadly, the truth is that the real numbers were actually far worse than that. The unadjusted numbers show that the U.S. economy actually lost 248,000 jobs in September and the government added more than a million Americans to the “not in the labor force”...

Paragons of American corporate citizenship are perverting an immigration program that was designed to boost the country’s high-tech economy. The U.S. Department of Labor has let businesses as prominent as Walt Disney World and Toys R Us use a special category of work-related visas not only to cut costs but to send jobs overseas. President Obama wants immigration reform? It’s never going to happen this way. So-called H-1B visas are intended to admit into the U.S. highly educated, highly skilled workers whose talents are desperately needed. For example, a company may apply to bring computer engineers from abroad if it...

A new book claims that male office workers are now so afraid of being on the receiving end of a sexual harassment case, they are reluctant to mentor, assist, befriend and even hold open doors for female colleagues. Crushingly, the book, Sex & The Office suggests men now view such ordinary, decent behaviours as “too risky” – and, in what will be a bitter irony for equality campaigners – claims that, as a direct consequence, women are now failing to advance at work. This terror of being accused of sexual harassment is now so common it has its own term,...

That Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin had her fingers in multiple financial pots — even while still high up in the State Department — is no secret. But the full extent of Abedin’s blurring of roles is coming to light. This summer, The Washington Post revealed that, at one point, Abedin — unusually granted “special government employee” status — was getting paid four different ways: from the taxpayers for her State work, from the Clinton Foundation, as political adviser to Hillary and by the Clinton-allied firm Teneo Holdings. The Washington Times reported last week how Huma’s hats came together in...

Andy KierszOctober 2, 2015 The September jobs report was broadly disappointing, with very few points of optimism. Along with non-farm payrolls and wage growth missing expectations, the civilian labor force participation rate — the percentage of the US population that is either working or looking for a job — fell by 0.2 percentage points to 62.4%. This is the lowest reading since October 1977.(snip)

LONDON (Reuters) - Gains for European and Asia stocks capped a wild week for financial markets on Friday, ahead of a key U.S. jobs report that could determine the chances of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates before year-end. Concerns about U.S. monetary policy and slowdown in emerging markets led by China have hit commodities markets and related stocks like Glencore and sent credit spreads wider this week in the wake of a summertime surge in volatility. An escalation of fighting in Syria, with Russian air strikes marking its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, has so far failed to...

DENVER – Little Spider Creations had been making scary creations in Denver for 24 years, but the owner of the company says legalizing recreational marijuana changed everything. He recently moved his company to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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...

A high school teacher who has worked in Oregon and Manhattan is determined to pass on his history of the Great Depression. “By the end of Roosevelt’s first two terms in office, nonagricultural private-sector workers had the right to organize unions and the National Labor Relations Board was created to enforce that right,” Adam Sanchez writes in the Fall 2015 issue of Rethinking Schools. “The unemployed had access to a new, permanent system of unemployment insurance, and the elderly could rely on social security.” “Millions of people were put back to work through federal jobs programs.” Sanchez, who teaches at...

Job openings soared to a fresh all-time high in July, evidence that the labor market continues to heat up. But employers aren't ready to close the deal to fill those positions with fatter pay packets. The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey out last week showed that actual hires fell 4% to 5 million — 770,000 lower than openings. That's a notable jolt for the "JOLTS" survey. In the seven years before the recession began in 2007, there were an average of 1.2 million more hires than openings per month. July marked the sixth-straight month in which that...

Monday, September 14, 2015 Government workers outnumber manufacturing workers in Illinois By Michael Lucci / Illinois Policy Institute - The top-producing states of the Midwest’s manufacturing powerhouse are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. But Illinois is the only one of the Great Lakes states where government workers dramatically outnumber manufacturing workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of June 2015, Illinois had only 574,000 factory workers, compared with nearly 750,000 state and local government workers. That means Illinois had only 3 manufacturing workers for every 4 state and local government workers. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2015/09/government-workers-outnumber-manufacturing-workers-in-illinois.html