Free Republic

BERLIN — When Marie Duness-Rose, 39, immigrated to Germany from Bulgaria 10 years ago, she left a lot behind, she says. But now she holds a management degree and runs a thriving bistro serving Balkan food in a popular neighborhood in Berlin. She is one of about 6.2 million non-German citizens in the country and one of about 15 million — or 19 percent of the total population — who are not ethnically German. That percentage is one of the highest proportions of immigrants in any European country, and it is not expected to decrease any time soon. Last month,...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but that probably does not signal a material shift in labor market conditions as claims remain near their pre-recession levels. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 315,000 for the week ended Sept. 6, the highest level since late June, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 300,000 last week. The period included the Labor Day holiday...

There’s good news folks.Obama finally has an employment policy that works. Apparently, if you cross the border from Mexico illegally, the chances of you finding and keeping a job rise considerably.At least in California. “Immigrants comprise more than one-third of California’s labor force (35%),” writes the California Immigrant Policy Center wrote in a report released in September. “They ?gure prominently in the agriculture, manufacturing, and repair and personal service industries. The undocumented in particular comprise a large share of the labor force in these industries as they represent 9% of the total state’s workforce. The undocumented alone comprise 38% of...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but that probably does not signal a material shift in labor market conditions as claims remain near their pre-recession levels. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-us-weekly-jobless-claims-rise-unexpectedly-20140911-story.html?track=rss

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but that probably does not signal a material shift in labor market conditions as claims remain near their pre-recession levels. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 315,000 for the week ended Sept. 6, the highest level since late June, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported.

The politics of a guaranteed income get a lot easier when you acknowledge that the U.S. is no longer the land of opportunity ... However, there are other trends that may be interacting with and exacerbating this original sin. Automation and globalization had already largely hollowed out America's manufacturing employment base; most jobs created during this "recovery" have been in crappy low-wage work. And when one takes automation to its obvious logical end, it's hard not to conclude that robots will soon be putting just about everyone out of a job. ... As someone with a nice, stimulating job, I...

For those who promote legalized gambling as a means of economic development or revitalization, or as a painless way to pay for public schools, the recent news from Atlantic City, New Jersey, is sobering. Dominated by its famous boardwalk, the beach resort is familiar to Americans from the popular game of Monopoly, the Miss America pageant and the Democratic Convention that nominated Lyndon B. Johnson for president. Almost 40 years ago, when casino gambling was prohibited by every state except Nevada, New Jersey voters succumbed to a slick campaign that promised to remake the fading resort into Las Vegas East....

On the average day, an unemployed American is more likely to be shopping—for things other than groceries and gas---than to be looking for a new job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 18.9 percent of Americans who were unemployed (in surveys conducted from 2009 through 2013) spent time in job search and interviewing activities on an average day, according to BLS. Yet 40.8 percent of the unemployed did some kind of shopping on the average day--either in a store, by telephone, or on the Internet. 22.5 percent of the unemployed, according to BLS, were shopping for...

In a burst of unwarranted enthusiasm, Forbes magazine’s international automotive analyst, Joann Muller, announced gleefully that the rise of the auto-making business in Mexico represented not only more bad news for Detroit, but was the result of “wise trade policies south of the border.” In the promotion for her article, Muller asked rhetorically: “Washington, are you listening?” She concluded that, if those trade policies, better known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), work so well for Mexico, Washington should do more of it for the United States. Not a single word in her lengthy article was devoted to...

Burgers via call center? Jack in the Box in Charlotte North Carolina testing process of outsourcing fast-food orders. That crackling voice taking your order at a fast-food drive-through may come from a lot farther away than the restaurant: Try Texas, or even overseas. San Diego-based Jack in the Box has tested outsourced drive-through order-taking since mid-2008 at seven of its 30 Charlotte-area restaurants. Spokeswoman Kathleen Anthony declined to specify the locations, though workers at the Cotswold restaurant in Charlotte recently said their restaurant uses the system. The technology is intended to improve speed, accuracy and service, freeing up restaurant employees...

Amid all the focus on boosting the minimum wage and legislating living wages, virtually no one seems to have noticed what is happening to the workweek in low-wage industries. Since December 2012, private industries paying up to about $14.50 an hour have added, on net, 972,000 nonsupervisory jobs with an average workweek of a mere 17.7 hours, an IBD analysis finds. That doesn't mean new employees are being hired for such few hours. Rather, it reflects a combination of reduced hours in existing jobs and short workweeks for newly created jobs. Overall, in these low-wage industries which employ 30 million...

There is a new form of cyberbullying out there and it is scary, because it could derail the professional career of any conservative - even those working in apolitical jobs. Slimy folks like “Busta Troll” are hijacking Facebook pages of conservatives, replacing the content with goats and anti-conservative messages. Some believe a goat is used because it is a Satanic symbol; many of the conservatives are targeted because of their Christian or Jewish views. The conservative Citizens’ Post page on Facebook was hijacked by the “Goatz Alliance,” which also goes by the name “Busta Troll,” by pretending to be from...

How to gear the free market so that people floursh.Two young girls sit on the front porch of an idyllic suburban home, staring at the wonder that is the modern smartphone. After one girl lists all the things the smartphone can do—“I can watch movies on it, read a book, talk with my friends... ...prompting the other girl to say, “I want one; make me one!” The smartphone then explains that “no one knows how to build even one of these things”—that millions of inventors, designers, miners, oil drillers, and factory owners around the world are needed to create just...

new report shows some 53 million Americans—or 34 percent of the U.S. workforce—are now working as freelancers in some capacity. "This is more than an economic change," asserts the report, a joint effort from the Freelancer's Union and freelance markeplaces oDesk and eLance. It's also "a cultural and social shift" that will "have major impacts on how Americans conceive of and organize their lives, their communities, and their economic power." The first and last time anyone looked at the freelance worker population in the U.S. was 2004, in a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Back then the GAO...

Shockingly enough the numbers are bad and performing below the usual optimistic expectations. Just like every other time.I’ll just give you the headlines for a taste of how frantically the media is spinning the bad news. A Disappointing Jobs Report May Mask Economy’s Strength – NPRJobs Report: Not Good, but Not Terrible Either – New York TimesDon’t freak out about bad jobs report – Washington PostWhy weak August jobs report probably a fluke – MarketWatchThe Awful New Jobs Report Has One Silver Lining – New Republic It’s a fluke! There’s a silver lining! The bad news is really good news!...

(CNSNews.com) - The number of foreign-born individuals holding jobs in the United States hit a recorded high of 24,639,000 in August, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS has been tracking the number of foreign-born workers annually since 2005 and monthly since 2007. The BLS does not distinguish between foreign-born individuals who are in the United States legally and those who are here illegally. “The foreign born are those who reside in the United States but who were born outside the country or one of its outlying areas to parents who were not U.S. citizens,”...

(CNSNews.com) – While unemployment nationwide is 6.1%, the unemployment rate for black Americans at 11.4% is more than double the rate for white Americans, who have an unemployment rate of 5.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The unemployment rate for Latino Americans, at 7.5%, is also lower than the unemployment rate for blacks, the BLS data show. For black Americans, age 16 and older, seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate between July and August stayed the same at 11.4%, and that is up from the 10.7% rate in June. The last time the black unemployment rate was 11.4%...

CNSNews.com) - A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent in six of the last twelve months, but prior to last October had not fallen that low since 1978. BLS employment statistics are based on the civilian noninstitutional population, which consists of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution such as a prison,...

Complete headline: Labor Participation Rate Drops To Lowest Since 1978; People Not In Labor Force Rise To Record 92.3 Million It is almost as if the Fed warned us this would happen. In a note released yesterday, a Fed working paper titled "Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects", looked at the US labor force and concluded that "while we see some of the current low level of the participation rate as indicative of labor market slack, we do not expect the participation rate to show a substantial increase from current levels as labor market conditions continue to improve."...

When I was contemplating where I might want to practice after law school, I was struck by the description of one particular firm in Philadelphia with a thriving tax practice. A former partner warned me off, explaining that they brought lunch to your desk. After years of scratching together my own lunch, I thought that sounded pretty great so I asked what was so terrible about having your lunch brought to you. “They do it,” she said simply, “Because they don’t want you to leave.” ....On August 26, 2014, the Department of Treasury released the 2014-2015 Priority Guidance Plan (downloads...