Free Republic

Texas has blessed the world with an incredible Christmas gift: plummeting oil prices. Both the production and the technology of fracking were substantially innovated and pioneered in the Lone Star state. The ramifications here at home and abroad are profound and incredible example of how innovation, property rights,and economic freedom trump the ugly agendas of statism. The gift of Texas oil is a gift that keeps on giving and stands in contrast to the lumps of coal dished out by the Federal government:...Gift 1:A true economic stimulus. The drop in oil prices from over $100 a barrel to less than...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, underscoring the economy's sustained strength. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 280,000 for the week ended Dec. 20, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. It was the lowest reading since Nov. 1 and marked the fourth straight week of declines. "The labor market is tightening up. Any job losses are just normal frictional unemployment in a healthy growing economy," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.

Fewer Americans born in the U.S. have jobs now than were employed to November 2007, despite a working-age population growth of 11 million. The amazing drop in employment highlights President Barack Obama’s slow recovery from the deep 2008 shock, but also spotlights many companies’ growing reliance on foreign migrant labor. Almost one in every two jobs added since 2009 have gone to foreign-born workers. In November 2014, one in every five U.S. jobs was held by a foreign-born worker, up from one-in-six jobs in January 2010, according to federal data highlighted by the Center for Immigration Studies. Since November 2007,...

...the economy grew at a 5 percent annual pace in the third quarter this year, revised up from the 3.9 percent that the Commerce Department had previously estimated. It's the best quarterly growth since 2003, and, on the heels of the 4.6 percent growth in the second quarter, it's also the best six months the economy has had in that long. The even better news, though, is that this growth, unlike every other uptick the past few years, looks sustainable. This isn't a blip. It's a boom.

Somewhat remarkably, given that it has presided over the worst recovery–by far–of the post-war era, the Obama administration tries to slice and dice employment numbers to portray itself as a champion of job creation. There are, indeed, a few more jobs today than there were six years ago. Yet for most Americans, the employment scene has gotten worse, not better. Why is that? Senate Budget Committee staff offer data in explanation: According to BLS data, in November of 2007 there were 23.1 million foreign workers in the United States with jobs. Today, the BLS reports, there are 25.1 million foreign...

.....Since the recession began in December 2007, 1.2 million net jobs have been created in Texas. Only 700,000 net jobs have been created in the other 49 states combined......... Only North Dakota has outpaced Texas on percent job growth, thanks to jobs created by the fracking revolution. California, Texas’ biggest economic rival, has created 985,600 fewer net jobs during the same period. California’s 1.5 percent job growth is ten percentage points lower than Texas’ percent job growth.............................

>With more than 330 million people using the service to list their resumes, find jobs, or find new hires, LinkedIn has a lot of data about the job market. To close out 2014, the company released a list of the top skills people who got hired this year had listed on their profiles and that recruiters searched for the most. These are the 10 skills that got people jobs this year:

MADISON, Wis. -- A newly formed coalition of more than 300 construction-related private businesses in Wisconsin announced Wednesday that it will work to defeat a right-to-work proposal being discussed by Republican leaders in the Legislature. Formation of the group comes as talks proceed behind the scenes among Republicans who control the Legislature about the timing of a right-to-work bill and what form it may take. Gov. Scott Walker repeated his message Wednesday, during a brief speech to Republican state senators in the Capitol, that he sees right-to-work as a distraction from his agenda. He told lawmakers he wants them focused...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, suggesting the labor market continued to strengthen. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 289,000 for the week ended Dec. 13, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The report came a day after the Federal Reserve offered an upbeat assessment of the labor market and the broader economy, and signaled it could start raising interest rates next year. The U.S. central bank, which has kept its short-term interest rate near zero since December 2008, lowered its unemployment rate forecast on...

If you listen to the Obama administration you might believe the economy is roaring. On some level jobs are being created. The problem of course is that they’re barely keeping up with population growth. Millions of jobs were lost when the recession took place in late 2008-2009. Very few of those jobs have been recovered, leaving millions in long term unemployment. The real unemployment rate, the Federal government’s U-6 number, is 11%. U-6 unemployment counts both the long term unemployed, which the official unemployment rate doesn’t do, as well as those who are underemployed. U-6 used to be the way...

The oil price crash could take thousands of good-paying jobs with it in America and around the world. More cuts are almost certainly on their way. On Monday, ConocoPhillips (COP) became the first major U.S. oil company to reveal that it is slashing spending for 2015, a decision the CEO asserted was "prudent given the current environment." Bad news already started to flow this week: Halliburton (HAL) affirmed that it plans to cut 1,000 positions due to the depressed oil market, and BP (BP) announced an unspecified number of layoffs as part of a $1 billion restructuring plan. It's true...

Six years after candidate Barack Obama vowed to make working for government “cool again,” federal hiring of young people is instead tailing off and many millennials are heading for the door. The share of the federal workforce under the age of 30 dropped to 7 percent this year, the lowest figure in nearly a decade, government figures show. With agencies starved for digital expertise and thousands of federal jobs coming open because of a wave of baby-boomer retirements, top government officials, including at the White House, are growing increasingly distressed about the dwindling role played by young workers. “Millennials are

"In 1993, the [Volvo Environment] Prize went to Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University and Professor John P. Holdren of the University of California in Berkeley, whose work laid the foundations of our understanding of how the dynamics of population growth, rising living standards and changing technology, as well as the relationships between them, interact in the context of environmental problems." List of past winners (and their work) from 1990 - 2014 Professor Paul R. Ehrlich, Professor John P. Holdren

First-time claims for unemployment benefits ticked down to 294,000 for the week ending Dec. 6, the Department of Labor reported Thursday, down from 297,000 the week before and right in line with expectations. The four-week moving average remained just below the 300,000 mark, at 299,250, signaling that layoffs remain low amid an expanding labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the economy added a healthy 321,000 jobs in November. At 5.8 percent, the unemployment rate has plummeted by 1.2 percentage points over the past year. The total number of workers receiving unemployment insurance fell by 95,846 to...

Looking for a job? If you're a programmer or computer science grad, there are plenty, said Meir Brand, head of Google's Israel office.Looking for a job? If you're a programmer or computer science grad, there are plenty of jobs for you in Israel, said Meir Brand, head of Google's Israel office. “I can tell you that there is a worldwide shortage of qualified people in these areas, and Israel is feeling this as well,” Brand told an audience at Haifa University, at an event sponsored by the Israel Lottery. The Lottery raises money for education, and Brand's message for listeners...

On Saturday [1] at the Associated Press, aka the Administration’s Press [2], reporter Christopher Rugaber described the economy’s pickup of 321,000 payroll jobs in November as “booming.”Not so fast, pal.Even if you accept that November’s seasonally adjusted result fairly reflects the underlying reality — and it doesn’t, which will be shown shortly — it will only be “booming” once we see such a figure repeated for at least five more months. On a workforce-adjusted basis, the analogous post-recession period during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s had a streak of 19 out of 20 months with an equal or...

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Reported income by all North Dakotans has more than doubled to a record $30.4 billion since the infancy of the state's oil boom in 2006, tax return filings show. Tax Department figures released to the Associated Press show the number of taxpayers in the state has jumped 37 percent since the state's oil bonanza began, from 339,000 in 2006 to 466,000 in 2013. Slightly more than 440,000 tax returns were filed in 2012. Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger said the increase in income and the number of taxpayers contributes heavily to the state's robust economy. "More people are...

Submitted by Jeffrey Snider, via Alhambra Investment Partners,The juxtaposition could not be more fitting with all that is transpiring at this moment in economic history. On Monday, the headlines were filled with, Black Friday Fizzles as Sales Tumble 11% and ‘Black Friday’ Fades as Weekend Retail Sinks 11%. Then the “employment” report comes out and now the headlines are, More Jobs and Higher Wages: U.S. Recovery Starts to Hit Home and Hiring Surge Gives U.S. Expansion a Lift Into 2015. The problem is one of mutual exclusivity as both narratives are totally inconsistent with each other even when factoring...

The labor force participation rate remained at a 36-year low of 62.8 percent in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participation rate, which is the percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population who participated in the labor force by either having a job during the month or actively seeking one, was 62.8 percent in November which matches the percentage since March 1978. In November, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 248,844,000. Of those, 156,397,000 participated in the labor force...

Aliens illegally holding jobs in the United States outnumber all unemployed people who are not in management, professional or related occupations as well as all unemployed who are 25 and older and who do not have a college degree, according to an estimate of "unauthorized workers" published by the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration and employment data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS only counts as "unemployed" people who have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks. “We estimate that the number of unauthorized workers grew from 4.8 million in 2000 to...