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Today's Philly Fed survey data missed expectations and was a steep drop from last month's eventually revised down heights. But what is most worrying in this release is the sharp increase in survey responders expecting to pay more for inputs in the future. From the Philly Fed (emphasis ours): Price increases for inputs as well as firms’ own manufactured goods are more wide‐ spread this month. Fifty‐four percent of the firms reported higher prices for inputs, compared with 52 percent in the previous month. The prices paid index, which increased 6 points in January, has increased 42 points over the...

Who better to explain why firms aren't hiring than the nation's largest business federation? How to create jobs was a central focus of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's State of American Business address today, given by its President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue. It's 2011 outlook was on the optimistic end of the spectrum, asserting that the year will provide 3.2% GDP growth and 2.4 to 2.6 million net new jobs. Of course, that will only bring down the unemployment rate by about 1%. What's holding the private sector back from hiring more aggressively? The Chamber emphasized the "regulatory tsunami"...

The Washington to Wall Street revolving door spins on, Bloomie reports: Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said. Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said. Of course, there is a well-trampled trail between the White House and Citigroup, most prominently traveled by Clinton administration Treasury Secretary...

Blistering Holiday Hiring Shreds The "All The Growth Is From Inventory" Scaremongers Joe Weisenthal Nov. 5, 2010, 3:02 PM When Q3 GDP came in at 2%, bears pointed out that it was all due to inventory rebuilding, and that the economy was fundamentally not strong. But as we pointed out at the time, you should only fear an inventory build if the end demand isn't there to follow it up. And though we don't know for sure, this would confirm that the demand will be there. Holiday hiring, as this chart from Calculated Risk shows, is already at a blistering...

Are you unemployed? Are you employed, but looking around for another job? Are you looking for an extra job, part-time job, work from home job, starting your own business, or finding a good turn-key business? Are you looking for a job for yourself, a family member or a friend? Are you looking for career tips? If any of these apply, this is the thread to bookmark.

News flash from the AFL-CIO’s blog: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When U.S., corporations sit on more than $800 billion without creating jobs, when banks hoard more than $1 trillion in profits without lending to small businesses and consumers and when health insurance companies with tens of billions in profits demand huge premium increases, there are only two words to describe such greed says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: “Economic treason!” Addressing the Ohio AFL-CIO convention in Columbus today, Trumka called on union members to mobilize and rally behind “economic patriots” in a “knock down drag-out” fight against the “false populism and name calling” that...

World Vision can hire based on religious beliefs, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that World Vision explicitly holds itself out to the public as a religious institution and is thus exempt from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting religious discrimination. The well-known Christian humanitarian organization applauded the ruling. "Our Christian faith has been the foundation of our work since the organization was established in 1950, and our hiring policy is vital to the integrity of our mission to serve the poor as followers of Jesus Christ," World Vision said...

Companies using criminal records or bad credit reports to screen out job applicants might run afoul of anti-discrimination laws as the government steps up scrutiny of hiring policies that could hurt blacks and Hispanics. A blanket refusal to hire workers based on criminal records or credit problems can be illegal if it has a disparate impact on racial minorities, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agency enforces the nation's employment discrimination laws. "Our sense is that the problem is snowballing because of the technology allowing these checks to be done with a fair amount of ease," said Carol...

One of the biggest obstacles to job growth may actually surprise most Americans: as fast as the private sector is creating jobs, the government is shedding them. And the cuts are far from over. Despite all the gloom and doom about the US economy, the private sector actually created 620,000 jobs over the past seven months, far faster than in the previous two recessions. The private sector is adding jobs now—that's good--because a year ago we were sliding toward oblivion,' says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. The problem, economists say, is that the pace of hiring...

Why I'm Not Hiring When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. By MICHAEL P. FLEISCHER With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it's going to be later—much later. Here's why. Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base pay among the 83 people at my little company...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Private employers added fewer workers to their payrolls in July than expected and hiring in June was much weaker than had been thought, a blow to an economic recovery that is failing to gain traction. The dismal news on jobs poses a challenge to Democrats hoping to retain their congressional majorities in November elections, as well as to officials at the Federal Reserve who are debating whether more needs to be done to foster growth. Overall non-farm payrolls fell 131,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, as temporary government jobs to conduct the decennial census...

Mixed signals have come out of the latest survey from the National Association of Business Economists. On the one hand, the percentage of companies expecting to hire more workers has hit the highest level in two and a half years. NABE: The percentage of firms increasing payrolls increased to 31%—a dramatic increase versus a year ago when only 6% were seeing hiring gains. The percentage of firms cutting jobs continued to move lower—from 36% a year ago to 14% this July. The share of respondents expecting their firms to add employees over the coming six months rose to 39%, the...

Even as the Obama administration cracks down on companies that hire illegal immigrants, it is simultaneously going after employers that it says go too far in vetting job applicants to ensure they are entitled to work in the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security currently is auditing employment records of many companies suspected of hiring undocumented workers. Yet in an emerging paradox for businesses, the Justice Department and other agencies have stepped up probes of employers—including restaurant groups, factories and retailers—for allegedly violating anti-discrimination laws by demanding too many identity documents from applicants who aren't U.S. citizens. To fend off...

July 10, 2010 Wall St. Hiring in Anticipation of an Economic Recovery By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ While much of the country remains fixated on the bleak employment picture, hiring is beginning to pick up in the place that led the economy into recession — Wall Street. The shift underscores the remarkable recovery of the biggest banks and brokerage firms since Washington rescued them in the fall of 2008, and follows the huge rebound in profits for members of the New York Stock Exchange, which totaled $61.4 billion in 2009, the most ever. Since employment bottomed out in February, New York...

A single employer filed 37,375 W-2 forms in tax year 2005 on which the Social Security Number and the name did not match. These "no-match" W-2 forms often -- but not always -- represent an illegal-alien worker fraudulently using someone else's Social Security number or a fake number. An employer who files 37,375 no-match W-2s in one year is almost certainly employing many thousands of illegal aliens -- and knows it. Yet there is no indication our federal government has taken any action to stop this employer from continuing to employ mass numbers of illegal aliens. The unemployment rate was...

New research from Harvard Business School suggests that federal spending in states appears to cause local businesses to cut back rather than grow. A conversation with Joshua Coval. Key concepts include: * The average state experiences a 40 to 50 percent increase in earmark spending if its senator becomes chair of one of the top-three congressional committees. In the House, the average is around 20 percent. * For broader measures of spending, such as discretionary state-level federal transfers, the increase from being represented by a powerful senator is around 10 percent. * In the year that follows a congressman's ascendancy,...

The Labor Department released sobering news this morning. Payrolls rose by 431,000 last month. That may sound good on the surface, but is far less than the median forecast of 536,000 jobs. But it gets worse: of the 431,000 jobs, 411,000 of them were census workers. Those are government jobs, not private sector jobs -- and are temporary. That means the private sector hired a mere 41,000 more workers in the past month. The unemployment rate fell a bit -- but only because of the way that figure is calculated. The unemployment rate only measures those people seeking work. If...

A Jobless Rate Still Unaffected by New Hiring By MOTOKO RICH SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — After hemorrhaging jobs for months, the economy is finally starting to add them. Yet the unemployment rate is not really budging because of people like Regina Myles. Ms. Myles, 51, has been out of work for three years. After a grueling job search yielded 150 interviews but no offers, she simply stopped looking last fall. Then this spring, with a $3,000 government-funded grant to help pay for a training course at a local beauty school in this Chicago suburb, she began applying for jobs online and...

Jobs Data Likely To Show Burst Of Temporary Hiring (Census Workers) By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP EconomicsJune 3, 2010 WASHINGTON – The nation's employers likely unleashed a wave of hiring last month, but it probably won't be repeated. Most of the jobs expected to have been generated in May were for census workers hired on a temporary basis by the federal government. Such hiring is expected to have peaked in May and then begin tailing off in June. By contrast, hiring by private employers — the backbone of the economy — may have slowed down a bit in May.All told, the...

Are you unemployed? Are you employed, but looking around for another job? Are you looking for an extra job, part-time job, work from home job, starting your own business, or finding a good turn-key business? Are you looking for a job for yourself, a family member or a friend? If any of these apply, this is the thread to bookmark.