Free Republic

Debbie Dooley is not a tree-hugger -- in fact she bills herself as a radical right-wing grandmother, and she is a founding member of the national Tea Party and a leader of the Atlanta Tea Party group. But Dooley is also an outspoken proponent of distributed solar generation and other forms of renewable distributed energy. She will be the featured speaker next week at the Wisconsin Solar Energy Industries Association’s Solar Social Speakers series -- as advocates in the state say solar is under attack by elected officials, regulators and major utilities. While in Wisconsin, Dooley will also visit a...

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell to a 14-year low last week, a positive signal that could counter doubts over whether the economy is shifting into a higher gear. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 264,000, the lowest level since 2000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The decline suggests the labor market is gaining steam even as worries grow that the economy will not be strong enough for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates around the middle of next year.

Which will be greater: the burden of student debt on Americans who went off this fall to their first year of college, or the amount of federal debt per full-time private-sector worker when these students earn their degrees and start looking for jobs? There is no doubt: It will be the amount of federal debt per full-time private-sector worker. As of last Friday, the total debt of the federal government was $17,858,480,029,490.28, according to the U.S. Treasury. That equaled $200,258.81 for each of the 89,177,000 full-time private-sector workers that, according to the Census Bureau, were in the United States in...

Everyone who isn't an Obamabot (Paul Krugman) or above the age of 5 knows that the current "official" unemployment rate of 5.9% is bogus. The real number that counts is the labor participation rate which has been shrinking for more than 5 years.Why is the labor force participation rate important? Ken Braun of MLive has very clear explanation: The U.S. “civilian noninstitutional population” - the total count of civilian adults - grew by 217,000 in September, according to the latest jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor. Those new entrants represent immigrants, young people coming of age, military personnel...

In a new working paper from the Mercatus Center, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan projects that the Affordable Care Act will reduce weekly employment per person by 3 percent, or roughly 4 million full-time-equivalent workers. These new estimates are significantly higher than the 2.5 million reduction in labor supply estimated by the Congressional Budget Office earlier this year. To be clear, a reduction in labor supply differs from a reduction in labor demand—a distinction many failed to recognize when the CBO first released estimates. It is not the case that the ACA will necessarily forces employees out; rather, the...

Over the last several decades, Washington has passed laws and promulgated regulations that diminish the ability of states to govern as envisioned by our nation’s founders. Meanwhile, across this great nation, governors are balancing budgets, reforming and reducing taxes, reducing the state regulatory burden and implementing novel programs to serve their citizens. In many respects, governors are doing this despite roadblocks put up by the federal government and bureaucrats in Washington. There is only so much that we can do at the state level. Federal regulations drive the costs of goods and services and those costs are then born by...

Minnesota job vacancies hit a 13-year high in the second quarter, with employers reporting nearly 84,700 job openings, state officials said Thursday. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) said about 56 percent of those job openings were in the seven-county Twin Cities area, with 44 percent in Greater Minnesota. Over the past year, outstate areas posted the strongest job growth. DEED said the most common job vacancies were in the fields of health care and social assistance (19 percent of the total), retail (15 percent), accommodation and food service (12 percent), manufacturing (8 percent) and educational services...

(CNSNews.com) - The United Mine Workers of America held a rally Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to protest Environmental Protection Agency regulations that they claim would destroy the nation’s coal industry and coal-related jobs while doing nothing to address climate change. On Tuesday, current and retired workers convened at Freedom Plaza, then marched to EPA offices to protest EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan, part of President Obama’s larger climate-change agenda, which aims to cut carbon pollution by imposing state-by-state emissions standards and fines for failure to meet those standards. CNSNews.com asked protesters, “If you could tell President Obama anything about these...

Republicans and conservatives frustrated with the GOP’s failure to nationalize this year’s midterm elections received a gift last week from, of all people, President Barack Obama. Going completely unappreciated is how his Department of Labor, particularly its Bureau of Labor Statistics, has from all appearances been conducting a de facto midterm election campaign with cooked unemployment figures for quite some time.On October 2, Obama did the job elected Republican leaders up to that point had failed to do. Speaking at Northwestern University, he told his audience [1]: ”I am not on the ballot this fall. … But make no...

Jobless claims by American workers for unemployment benefits fell by 1,000 to 287,000 last week, a sign that US employers are hanging on to workers. Jobless claims are currently lower than they were before the country's economic crisis began. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to nearly its lowest level since before the 2007-09 recession, a sign of growing steam in the U.S. labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 287,000 in the week ended Oct. 4, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The data adds...

Hot news: The Dems are in a race against reality. Which Dems and which reality will win are the only questions. Unfortunately this is a multiple-choice question and all of the answers are correct. A, B, C, or all of the above work just as well. Let’s start with the question (A) about the Federal Reserve Bank (Dem), interest rates and the economy. Yesterday was a great day in the market because easy money is here to stay…and least for a little while. And as long as interest rates stay low, the market goes up…at least for a little while.There...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just how healthy is the U.S. job market? Despite steady hiring and falling unemployment, the question has provoked sharp debate and considerable uncertainty on the eve of the September jobs report. Will millions without jobs who aren't looking for one eventually start looking? Why aren't companies filling more of their openings? Why can many people find only part-time work? Much of the uncertainty flows from a big question: Does today's 6.1 percent unemployment rate, far below the 10 percent it hit in 2009, mean the job market is near full health? Or does the unemployment rate overstate...

Manufacturing in Michigan has made a comeback. Following a decade of slumps and dips, the increase in manufacturing jobs in the state is outpacing the nation as a whole and in terms of the actual number of manufacturing jobs the state is poised to surpass Illinois. “Michigan lost a lot of manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2009,” said James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “But since then there has been a robust increase in manufacturing employment. This is true in comparison to both the United States as a whole and Illinois in...

In another sign of President Obama's deteriorating public support, more than half of Americans now say that he is failing as president, the latest IBD/TIPP poll finds. The poll, which ended Friday, found that 53% characterize Obama's presidency as a failure vs. 41% who rate it a success. Just 6% say that they aren't sure. Obama's standing among independents is even worse, with 58% calling his presidency is a failure. Half of those who live in states that voted for Obama say that his presidency is failing.

America's jobs picture is seeing huge improvement, with robust numbers that are giving investors confidence in the economy. The U.S. added 248,000 jobs last month, bringing the unemployment rate below 6 percent. But one part of that picture is still a puzzle: People continue to stop looking for work, and in doing so, are dropping out of the labor pool. In fact, the participation rate in the labor force has fallen to 62.7 percent -- its lowest level since early 1978. How can this be? As the job market heats up and the unemployment rate falls, wouldn't that mean more...

While people celebrate the fact that America's unemployment rate has fallen below six percent for the first time since 2008, some economic experts say not so fast and point out the discrepancy between the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data released its unemployment summary for the month of September on Friday and found that the country's overall unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 5.9 percent, the lowest the rate has been since July of 2008. Additionally, employers added approximately 248,000 jobs in the month. American Enterprise Institute resident scholar in...

If you think the Obama administration has been characterized by a big expansion of government employment, you're wrong.Bill McBride at Calculated Risk has updated his charts of public sector payrolls under President Barack Obama and his recent predecessors.Calculated Risk As you can see, it's not even close.Obama in the dark blue line has seen a sustained and violent slump in public sector employment since he became president, and we're not even close to closing the gap.Reagan had a brief decline in public sector employment, but it came back fast. All the other presidents saw only gains on this measure.

A record 92,584,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in September, as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, a level it has not seen in 36 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. Six times in the last twelve months, the participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent; but September’s 62.7 percent is the lowest since February of 1978. The participation rate is the percentage of the civilian non-institutional population who participated in the labor force by either having a job or actively seeking one. Those not in...

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell struggled to get something off her chest during Sunday’s Meet the Press.... ......“You know — I’m not echoing Reince Priebus, because he is obviously partisan, and that’s his job,” she said haltingly. “But if you look at all the reporting from the jobs data on Friday reported that participation rates are at historic lows, decades lows. Fifty-nine percent are not involved in the labor force. That’s just not a sustainable recovery.”

A study published by the New York Federal Reserve found that the number of job openings rose by an estimated 20% in the six months following the lapse of the federal government's extended unemployment benefits. The lapse occurred because the Republican controlled House refused to vote to extend the benefits. Fatih Karahan, one of the authors of the study, cited the "mutually reinforcing effects of decreasing the burden on businesses to fund the benefits and decreasing the incentives of recipients to shun employment. If your tax burden of supporting benefits declines you can afford to hire more workers. Similarly, if...