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President Obama’s recent State of the Union address was the culmination of months of advocacy from Democrats and activists for a higher minimum wage. The President proposed a raise to the minimum wage for federal contractors by executive order to $10.10 per hour and called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage for all workers to the same mark, along with indexing it to inflation. A raise of the national minimum wage was framed as giving low income workers the “living wage” they deserve and fighting perceived growth in income inequality in America. Though the President’s proposal is well...

Five years in to Barack Obama’s presidency, the number of African-Americans participating in the labor force has hit rock bottom. The news media has ignored this stunning revelation from Friday’s monthly jobs report by the Labor Department. The exception has been PBS, which interviewed economist Dean Baker who had written about it in a report published Friday. “The drop in labor force participation was sharpest for African Americans, who saw a decline of 0.3 percentage points to 60.2 percent, the lowest rate since December of 1977. The rate for African American men fell 0.7 percentage points to 65.6 percent, the...

In the coming days, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Noel Canning versus the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This case arose when President Obama made several so-called recess appointments to the Board on January 4, 2012 when the Senate was not formally in recess. This landmark case is expected to determine how much leeway the President has to make appointments without Senate confirmation, and more significantly, it will have serious implications on the broader powers of the presidency itself and the system of checks and balances. The United States Court of Appeals for...

Former minister Yossi Beilin said Saturday that former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was a man with a short temper and a long streak of nastiness when it came to dealing with residents of towns in Judea and Samaria. “It wasn't worthy behavior for a Prime Minister,” said Beilin, a former Labor politician who was identified with the radical-left elements of the party. Beilin, one of the proponents of the Geneva Initiative, which advocated a total Israeli withdrawal from all lands liberated in 1967, said that Rabin “would fight with the settlers for fighting's sake. When you want to remove thousands...

Asked how the GOP could win the Senate in the 2014 elections, Walker explained that Republicans must not be viewed as the 'party of no' as Democrats have tried to brand them. "As they're running for Senate, focus on the two key issues: an economic concern in our country, [and] there are still too many who are not coming through." Walker explained that Reagan's 1980 acceptance speech should be a model for the Republican Party to message for voters. "If you live in poverty, we want to lift you out,” he said. “We don't want to leave anyone behind. We...

Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar (Likud) spoke to Arutz Sheva on Tuesday, saying that by opposing the recently passed law to prevent infiltration by illegal immigrants, the leftist factions in the Knesset have taken a "mistaken outlook" that endangers the future of Israel. The law was officially passed on Monday after a heated debate. It allows police to jail illegal migrants for up to 12 months in special detention facilities, after the previously existing law allowing 3 years of internment was overturned by the Supreme Court in September. Sa'ar expressed confidence that the law would stand up to any petitions in...

MK Omer Ber-Lav (Labor) said, "President Obama clarified at the Saban Forum that the agreement obtained with Iran is the best possible option under the circumstances, as there was no option of entirely dismantling the Iranian nuclear program. Obama is a true friend of Israel, and I hope Prime Minister Netanyahu will successfully maneuver the superpowers to make the final agreement with Iran much better than...

The Labor Department will release its latest unemployment data this Friday. But it won’t put a note in the news release saying that its jobless figures might have been fabricated. So I’ll write the note for the department, which is, understandably, shy about the whole matter. Warning: The unemployment numbers you see in this press release may have been fabricated. In fact, the jobless rate that seems so important to the Federal Reserve, economists, businesses and so many others might have been a joke for years. Use these numbers at your own risk.

Government policies including the Fed monetary expansion have seeming made matters worse for the average American family. Particularly since 2007. The GINI coefficent is a measure of income distribution in country. And it has been skyrocketing since 2007 when Democrats took control of Congress and 2009 when they achieved a majority in both the House and Senate AND the Presidency. But for all the talk of income redistribution and “leveling the playing field,” things have only gotten worse for the average American household. Here is the GINI coefficent for the USA since 2005. Note the decline from 2006 to 2007,...

Facebook’s billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg has launched a series of new television ads pushing for Congress to pass amnesty now, Politico reports. The new ad quotes President Barack Obama, House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Speaker John Boehner and strikes, as Politico’s Maggie Haberman wrote, a new “tone” for Zuckerberg. “The ads, obtained by Politico, mark a shift in course for the group,” Haberman wrote. “Its earlier ads — aired through FWD.us and its partisan-leaning affiliates — sought to persuade with a gentler tone, or by offering cover to Senate...

When Trevor Colestock, an award winning librarian at the Miami Norland High School, reported a cheating scandal on standardized tests, he believed he was doing the right thing. But when a Miami-Dade Public Schools Inspector General verified Colestock’s claims, the teachers union–of which Colestock is an elected union steward–and Miami-Dade Public Schools decided that too much honesty is bad for business. According to the Inspector General, Norland students “…were allowed to cheat on a computerized test designed to prepare students for quality employment after graduation.” Apparently a number of students “…were provided with a cheat sheet or were allowed to...

This will probably come as no surprise to those who watched the federal government stepping in to help unions strongarm manufacturers in the last few years, but Boeing is back in the news with more labor issues. The aerospace giant is getting ready to unveil their newest jet – the 777X – which had been widely expected to be built in the Seattle area as so many of their other lines have been. But at the last minute, the unions decided the deal wasn’t fat enough for their tastes. Boeing workers’ rejection of a new labour deal has sent the...

The percentage of American civilians 16 or older who have a job or are actively seeking one dropped to a 35-year low in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In September, the labor force participation rate was 63.2 percent, but in October it dropped to 62.8 percent—the lowest it has been since February 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president. The labor force, according to BLS, is that part of the civilian noninstitutional population that either has a job or has actively sought one in the last four weeks. The civilian noninstitutional population consists of people 16 or older,

Complete Headline: Whopping 932,000 Americans Drop Out Of Labor Force In October; Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 35 Year Low The only two charts that matter from today's distorted non-farm payrolls report. First, the labor force participation rate, which plunged from 63.2% to 62.8% - the lowest since 1978! But more importantly, the number of people not in the labor force exploded by nearly 1 million, or 932,000 to be exact, in just the month of October, to a record 91.5 million Americans! This was the third highest monthly increase in people falling out of the labor force in US...

Bloomberg, link only: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-05/senate-democrats-pause-from-obamacare-to-push-labor-bills.html

According to OECD, teen unemployment rates (under 25) in Europe continue to escalate, particularly in Greece and Spain. eurounemploy That is scary looking! It reminds me of The Who’s song “Teenage Wasteland.” But, the US is no slouch when it comes to teen unemployment. The 16-19 cohort is seeing an unemployment rate of 22.60% while to 20-24 cohort is experiencing 12.80% unemployment. For the sake of comparison, I also included Germany teenage (under 25) unemployment which is 7.70%. unemployteenusgerm For the entire population, here is a chart of labor force participation in Germany, Spain, USA and Mexico. lfp103113 Even beleaguered...

Census Bureau: Means-Tested Gov't Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers October 24, 2013 - 11:32 PM By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines. There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who...

(CNSNews.com) - The number of Americans who are 16 years or older and who have decided not to participate in the nation's labor force has climbed to a record 90,609,000 in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS counts a person as participating in the labor force if they are 16 years or older and either have a job or have actively sought a job in the last four weeks. A person is not participating in the labor force if they are 16 or older and have not sought a job in the...

(CNSNews.com) - American women participated in the nation’s labor force in September at a rate that matched the lowest level in 24 years, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, the number of women actually holding jobs declined by 154,000 from August to September. Because the number of women participating in the labor force declined in September, the drop in the number of women who were actually employed did not cause an increase in the unemployment rate for women. In fact, even though 154,000 fewer women worked in August than September, the...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 148,000 in September, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.2 percent. The bad news? Economists were predicting 180,000 increase in employment. Even worse, the increase in PRIVATE payrolls was only 126,000. empdata102213 U6 unemployment fell to 13.6% while labor force participation remained the same. u6lfp102213 Where were the jobs created? Transportation and Warehousing: + 23K Government: +22K Retail Trade: +21K Temp Help: +20K NOT in labor force increased by 136,000. So, the labor force dropouts exceed private jobs created. Charming. These numbers are not...