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The US labor market continues to hum. US companies added 156,000 nonfarm payrolls in December, which was a bit lighter than the 175,000 expected. On the plus side, November’s payrolls number was revised up by 19,000 to 204,000. December marked the 75th straight month of job growth in the US. As expected, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7% from 4.6% in November. This came as the labor force participation rate climbed to 62.7% from 62.6% a month ago. Importantly, wages are heating up. Average hourly earnings grew 0.4% month-over-month, which was better than the 0.3% expected. It was also...

The world-renown MD Anderson Cancer Center has announced a workforce reduction by 1,000, the CEO of the center said on Thursday. The cancer hospital has had $110 million in operating losses from September through November this year, reported the Houston Chronicle. [Snip] The local publication reported that the financial problems began in the spring when the hospital implemented a new electronic medical-record system. Doctors and staff members at the center spent a great deal of time getting up to speed in using the program and that took time away from their patients.

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/how-trump-won-the-white-working-class

Oh no, they're making America great again! Last week, we learned that Ford was cancelling plans to build a $1.6 billion dollar plant in Mexico. Instead, the company would be investing $700 million in Michigan, creating hundreds of permanent jobs. As USA Today reported: Ford Motor announced Tuesday that it would cancel plans for a $1.6 billion Mexico plant and launch a Michigan expansion in a move that may be viewed as a capitulation to Donald Trump.

If President-elect Donald Trump is going to meet his pledge to energize the U.S. economy, there's a simple yet tough way to do so: Put more men to work. The proportion of men in their prime working years who either have a job or are looking for one has been dropping for decades – and limiting economic growth in the process. The full brunt of the 60-year decline burst into view during the 2016 election. Trump triumphed in part by vowing to restore jobs at steel mills, auto plants and coal mines – the types of work that had once...

The year 2016 has been a year of change, and very often not in the direction most pundits had predicted. The United States has proved no exception. Regardless of this, however, the U.S. economy’s fundamental needs have not changed. American businesses, workers and consumers will continue to require better jobs, modernized infrastructure and more efficient markets. We must wait to see how the incoming Trump administration’s pledges translate into concrete action in areas such economic growth, streamlining regulation and upgrading America’s infrastructure. In many ways, the time for investing in the United States has never been better and non-U.S. firms...

Factory heads in Minnesota and the rest of the Midwest are ready for 2016 to be over. Pressure from the strong U.S. dollar coupled with soft oil, mining and agriculture sectors meant tough conditions across the board. Add in some nervousness because of a pending presidential election and optimism was tepid. Enter 2017. U.S. manufacturers say on surveys they are upbeat and cautiously optimistic about the new year. Bad trends will reverse themselves and positive trends — such as efficiency gains, infrastructure spending and improved pricing for oil and iron ore — will gain momentum, according to national and Midwest...

The President Elect is doing a lot of pushing and shoving to bring jobs back to the United States (a long overdue move if you ask me) but there’s one sector of growth which is surging right now and it has little to do with his proposals. Ever since OPEC ran up the white flag after we outlasted them in a rock bottom oil market and agreed to limit production, oil prices have been creeping back up to a relatively stable level. That means that production will be coming back online across America, but the pause we experienced since last...

In a New York Times op-ed entitled “Fix Immigration. It’s What Voters Want” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., argues President-elect Trump “has a clear mandate not only to stop illegal immigration, but also to finally cut the generation-long influx of low-skilled immigrants that undermines American workers.” He says the nation needs an immigration policy that focuses less on powerful special interests and more on everyone else. Below are excerpts from his op-ed [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/opinion/tom-cotton-fix-immigration-its-what-voters-want.html?_r=1]. "[P]owerful industries [that] benefit from [high] immigration…contend that stricter immigration enforcement will further shrink the pool of workers and raise their wages. They argue that closing our borders...

Tom Hagen, chairman of Erie Insurance, remembers the exact spot his small desk occupied when he went to work at the company in 1953. Standing in that same building - now the Erie Insurance Heritage Center - Hagen on Friday said the small office building was crowded at the time with 100 employees. Sixty-three years later, local employment has grown to 2,889 and problems with crowding persist. The company announced a solution to that Friday morning - a plan to invest $135 million in a 346,000-square-foot building that's expected to make room to add another 600 employees, and possibly make...

Verizon on Monday announced plans to hire up to 300 full-time employees throughout 2017 at its Huntsville call center. The wireless communication company will hold an onsite career fair Saturday at its Huntsville call center at 475 Quality Circle. According to the announcement, career fair attendees will have the opportunity to network with recruiters, leadership and employees from the customer service department and take a tour of the facility. Verizon said it will offer competitive salaries and benefits, including health care coverage and participation in the company's 401(k) program. Interested candidates may apply online at verizon.com/jobs.

Catawba County was the biggest winner in last week’s announcement that GKN Driveline would bring 302 jobs and $179 million in investment to four of its N.C. facilities. A GKN Driveline facility in Maiden will get almost half of the jobs (143) and more than 60% of the investment ($110 million). It’s the second big expansion at the Maiden plant in two years as GKN works to meet demand for new technology in automobile drivetrain design. In 2014, the company added 228 employees and spent $114 million at the plant. Once the latest new hires are added over the coming...

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said telecommunications group Sprint Corp (S.N) and a U.S. satellite company OneWeb will bring 8,000 jobs to the United States, and the companies said the positions were part of a previously disclosed pledge by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp. SoftBank (9984.T) holds stakes in both companies and its chief, billionaire businessman Masayoshi Son, earlier in December said he would invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 jobs. Sprint in January said it had cut 2,500 jobs as part of its plan to cut $2.5 billion in costs. On Wednesday it said it...

President-elect Donald Trump will be making a "positive" announcement on economic development Wednesday afternoon, according to transition aides. Aides did not provide further details, but spokesman and future White House press secretary Sean Spicer intimated to reporters that the news will be about American jobs. "The president-elect will have some news on the economic front later this afternoon that should be very positive for American workers," he said during the daily call with reporters. The news is expected around 4 p.m., Spicer said. Trump has taken a more hands-on role than other presidents-elect, particularly in the hopes of delivering on...

Columbus-based Lindal Manufacturing Inc. is planning to expand operations in Bartholomew County. The company will invest more than $17 million to build and equip a 100,000 square-foot facility in a move it says will retain 65 jobs and add 30 jobs over the next three years. The Republic reports the Columbus City Council has approved 10-year tax abatements for the construction of the facility and the purchase of the new equipment. Lindal North America Managing Director Jerry Miller tells the publication the company plans to break ground in the spring with construction expected to take nine months to complete. The...

Change is afoot in the fashion industry. We've already seen glimpses of how the tectonic plates in the fashion world are moving. In one of our best-read fashion stories of 2016, we explored how some of the premium U.S. fashion brands of the past—Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren—have lost their luster. They're losing ground to a new generation of direct-to-consumer brands that were born on the internet, including Everlane, Cuyana, M.Gemi, DSTLD, American Giant, and Vrai & Oro. These companies are offering something different from the flashy designers of yesterday: the insight into their supply chain and sometimes even...

The number of millennials who have not moved out of their parents or grandparents homes has climbed to a 75-year high of 40 percent. The high-water mark for young people “failing to launch” was set during the Great Depression. Its duplication after eight years of Obama Administration policies is seen by some as a poor legacy for the outgoing chief executive. One who doesn’t see it that way is President Obama. “The Republicans do a lot of talking about family values, but it has been my policies that have brought succeeding generations under the same roof,” he boasted. “The whole...

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s incoming administration is girding for battle with corporatists, globalists, and special business interests over his core policy objective of bringing U.S. manufacturing jobs that have been shipped overseas back to the United States, several senior advisers to Trump tell Breitbart News. “There is a big fight brewing over control of the American economy’s direction,” one of three senior advisers to the president-elect with intimate knowledge of the looming fight told Breitbart News. “Globalists, Wall Street fat cats and corporatists are fighting against President-elect Trump’s core message of returning the United States back to a major manufacturing...

U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi admitted that manufacturing challenges exist exclusively in the United States thanks to oppressive regulation set forth by President Obama. Longhi is willing to bring as many as 10,000 jobs back to the United States because of the prosperity predicted with the advent of the incoming Trump administration. Jobs were lost to lay offs and downsizing during the Obama administration, and many employees found work overseas.

TylerDurdenDecember 23,2016 Just over six years ago, in December of 2010, we wrote "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society", in which we predicted - and showed - that in light of the underlying changes resulting from the second great depression, whose full impacts remain masked by trillions in monetary stimulus and soon, perhaps fiscal, America is shifting from a traditional work force, one where the majority of new employment is retained on a full-time basis, to a "gig" economy, where workers are severely disenfranchised, and enjoy far less employment leverage, job stability and perks than their pre-crash peers....