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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is climbing to his highest support yet in a new national poll. The real estate mogul earned a broad 41 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters in a new national Monmouth University poll released today.

>Support for Donald Trump divides the Republican electorate along lines of class but not ideology with blue-collar voters — those without a college degree — giving him his biggest base of support.The divide between the GOP's blue-collar and white-collar wing has shown up repeatedly in polls throughout the election season. It's clearly on display in new findings released Friday by SurveyMonkey, the online polling firm, which has been tracking the electorate since early this summer. Trump's support varies little by ideology. His backers closely mirror the distribution of very conservative, conservative and moderate voters within Republican ranks, SurveyMonkey's data show.That's...

Twenty-five years ago, President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Immigration Act of 1990. Instead of reforming the corrosive effects of the Immigration Act of 1965, an act that birthed the mass immigration system we have today, the 1990 act made the situation dramatically worse and make it less likely Americans would fill American jobs.The act raised the annual immigration ceiling from 530,000 to 700,000 (excluding other types of legal entry like refugee admissions) while creating a coterie of new immigrant and guestworker visas, mostly for semi-skilled and unskilled workers.Perhaps the most controversial creation of the 1990 act...

There's a pall over the financial markets this holiday season, and it has little to do with the shortage of daylight this time of year. The lifeblood of the street -- bonuses -- will be cut, and if you survive, there's no guarantee of a better 2016. That's because Wall Street is bracing for merciless job losses that could total 100,000 in the US alone by June. By this estimate, Wall Street head count in New York City -- some 170,000 today -- could shrink by as much as 17,000, with the downsizing hitting everyone from million-dollar backers to middle-class...

The U.S. labor force is expected to expand only slowly over the coming decade as the country ages and more Americans give up on holding a job, a potential drag on broader economic growth. The economy is expected to generate 9.8 million new jobs, a 6.5% increase, from 2014 to 2024, the Labor Department said in new projections released Tuesday. While steady, that is a historically slow pace. By comparison, 10-year job creation averaged almost 14% during the 2001-07 expansion and close to 17% during the 1990s. The slowdown highlights declining participation as baby boomers retire and younger Americans opt...

The oil collapse has thrust Houston's economy into upheaval, but the downturn won't be nearly as bad as the ruinous 1980s bust that left permanent scars on the city, according to the newly released employment forecast by the Greater Houston Partnership. "The only similarities between now and the 80s are the oil glut and price collapse," GHP analysts wrote in their forecast. "Energy will restructure, but it won't jettison half its workforce as it did back then. Real estate will soften, but it won't turn to mush. Houston banks may have nonperforming energy loans on their books, but those loans...

Pastor Darrell Scott’s favorite thing about Donald Trump? “As they say in Dominican community vernacular,” Scott says, “I like his swag.” Scott, a 56-year-old evangelical minister from Cleveland, Ohio, whose New Spirit Revival Center boasts thousands of members, first met the Republican presidential front-runner five years ago. Trump had invited some 25 pastors — three of them, including Scott and his wife, Belinda, were black — to Trump Tower for an announcement: He was considering running for president, and he asked the assembled guests to pray that God would point him in the right direction. Scott was skeptical. “I said,...

Lawmakers continue to wrangle over a bill that would overhaul the nation's immigration system. One provision in this bill would allow companies to import a lot more skilled workers. The tech industry has lobbied hard for this, despite fears among some American workers about the extra competition. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin says the bill has American workers covered. --Employers will be given a chance to hire a temporary foreign worker when truly needed. But first, they'll be required to recruit Americans. No exceptions, no excuses,-- he said. Still, making companies recruit Americans isn't the same as making them hire them....

The H-2 guest worker program, which brought in 150,000 legal foreign workers last year, isn't supposed to deprive any American of a job. But many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to deny jobs to U.S. workers so they can hire foreigners instead. A BuzzFeed News investigation. _______________________________________ MOULTRIE, Georgia -- "All you black American people, f___ you all ... just go to the office and pick up your check," the supervisor at Hamilton Growers told workers during a mass layoff in June 2009. The following season, according to a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 80 workers,...

It is important to remember that our country was founded on self-employment. Most historians estimate that over 80 percent of adult males in the U.S. were self-employed for the first 50 or more years before and after winning independence. These workers would be excluded from the current labor market definition. This makes no sense at all. As our country changes, so should our concept of how to measure employment. Today's younger generations want self-employment or fulfillment and high flexibility and from their employer. In many ways they are returning to the spirit of our Founders. They want to be independent...

The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release December 04, 2015 . Statement by the President This morning we learned that our businesses have added 13.7 million jobs over 69 months, extending the longest streak on record. Last night, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass a transportation bill that will help us build on America's progress by growing our economy and creating more good jobs for our middle class. This bill is not perfect, but it is a commonsense compromise, and an important first step in the right direction. I look forward to signing this bill...

Here is one of the reasons why the Fed is confident the US economy is strong and resilient enough to sustain a rate hike: since January, the US has added 293,900 waiter & bartender positions and zero manufacturing workers.Unless one is an economist, no further commentary is needed. If one is an economist, we eagerly look forward to an extended discussion why one should focus only on the blue line and ignore the red one, debate the adverse impacts of the weather (both hot and cold) on manufacturing, listen to how the collapse of high-paying jobs is actually a...

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 211,000 in November, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in construction, professional and technical services, and health care. Mining and information lost jobs. Household Survey Data In November, the unemployment rate held at 5.0%, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.9 million, was essentially unchanged.During the past 12 months, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons are down by 0.8 percentage point and 1.1 million, respectively. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.7%),...

Another touching story from the American heartland crosses our desk this morning, dealing with the dedicated efforts of labor unions to care for their workers and ensure the prosperity of the working class. The United Auto Workers have been in a long series of negotiations with the nation’s auto manufacturers in the latest round of contract wrangling. The result was a deal which should make everyone happy, if by “everyone” you mean the people running the unions. At the heart of the debate was the issue of outsourcing, where American companies ship their facilities (and all of the associated jobs)...

The Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 200,000 jobs in November. That's in line with the average so far this year - 206,000 - but below the 2014 monthly pace of 260,000. The unemployment rate is down to 5.0 percent from the recession high of 10 percent, largely because fewer adults are looking for work. Since the recovery began, GDP growth has averaged 2.1 percent and the economy has added 12.6 million jobs. Growth should pick up to 2.5 to 3 percent next year, but here are five reasons why jobs creation will still disappoint. 1....

GOP upstart shocks with outreach to blacks, the real reason for MSM vitriol Donald Trump's outreach effort to black leaders this week was portrayed as a botched and bungled meeting, a circus in which the mouthy billionaire declared that the 100-plus pastors in attendance would be endorsing his bid to grab the GOP presidential nomination, only to have the men of God themselves say, not so fast, Donny T. The cables and the networks and the newspapers mocked the meet-and-greet, even before it happened. And here's why: Trump had shocked again. This non-candidate who has no business running for president...

The best part is when she asks the obvious follow-up -- is a path to legalization "amnesty"? -- and he won't even make eye contact. There's a spectrum of answers to this question on the right, of course: 1. Amnesty is citizenship without preconditions. That's the strictest definition, and naturally the one preferred by Beltway Republicans like Marco Rubio in his Gang of Eight days. (Marco Rubio circa 2010 had a different view.) As long as you're forcing illegals to jump through some sort of hoop, be it learning English, paying back taxes, going to the back of the line,...

Donald Trump is insisting that "most" of the 100 black pastors he met with on Monday are endorsing him for president. "I thought it was an amazing meeting. I met some fantastic people," Trump said following the private meeting at Trump Tower. The GOP presidential front-runner had canceled a planned press conference on Sunday where he was to have highlighted the endorsements of 100 black religious leaders. He did so after several of the pastors denied they were endorsing Trump for president. Darrell Scott, a pastor at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, stood by Trump's side...

PARIS - President Obama joined leaders from 150 nations on Monday in pledging action against climate change, kicking off a historic two-week gathering that Obama called a "turning point" in the battle against one of humanity’s gravest threats. ...."The growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other," Obama said in a speech at the Le Bourget conference center in Paris’s industrial outskirts. "What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet." Obama, who has staked his...

After she joined Donald Trump's real estate business, Louise Sunshine struggled to maintain a steady weight while managing her new career alongside the busy schedules of three young children. Trump must have noticed, Sun­shine said. She recalled that he kept an unflattering photograph of her in a drawer - a "fat picture," as she called it - that he would pull out when she did something he didn't like. It was "a reminder that I wasn't perfect," said Sunshine, who worked with Trump for 15 years starting in the mid-1970s when he set about remaking Manhattan's skyline. "He just is...