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Full title: Trump apprentices' starting pay $60K, more in demand than college grads: Secretary Acosta (3min video at link) U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta detailed the Trump administration’s plan to bridge the labor gap Monday, to connect job seekers with executives looking to fill 6 million open positions in the country through expanded “high quality” apprenticeship programs. {snip} Acosta noted that graduates of vocational schools are more in-demand than traditional college graduates. “[Apprentices have an] average starting salary of about $60,000 per year. Nine out of 10 are employed upon completion of the programs. Both the starting salary and the...

The Labor Department announced that it will increase protections for Americans as much as it can, while cracking down on fraud and abuse within various foreign guest worker programs. In a news release, the Labor Department said it would implement a series of changes aimed at “aggressively” combating fraud and abuse within visa programs like the H-1B visa. Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and non-profits are exempt from the cap. With more entering the...

So, yesterday ADP releases it's job numbers, 253,000 new jobs vs 185,000 estimated.And everybody here at FR is whooping and hollering. Then the BLS numbers are released today and their numbers are WAAAAAY down.138,000 according to BLS.Almost 50,000 BELOW what was expected.So, what is right and what is wrong?How can ADP be almost twice of BLS?The Atlanta Fed projected the Q2 GDP growth at a 4% pace.That suggests the economy is on a tear.Does anybody know the reality of the labor situation?And can you explain it for the rest of us?

LONDON — In 2015, Britain’s Labour Party tacked to the left, repudiating the middle-way philosophy that had won it three elections under Tony Blair. Voters responded by handing the party its worst defeat in three decades. Rather than scramble back toward the center, Labour lurched further left. The party elected as its leader Jeremy Corbyn, a white-bearded baby boomer from the back benches who, like Bernie Sanders in the United States, ignited an improbable movement among young activists with his attacks on the rigged capitalist system and unquestioned fidelity to socialist ideals. Now, with less than six weeks to go...

Earlier this month I was asking what, if anything, was going to happen with the Obama era refugee deal which had been struck with Australia. They’ve got thousands of migrants, primarily from Iraq, Syria and other troubled regions, basically stuck in some island camps where they are coming into conflict with the local residents. The United States had said that we would be taking more than a thousand of them off their hands, but the President somewhat famously referred to it as “a dumb deal” he would have to study. I suppose the study period is over because we got...

Israel’s Opposition Labor party announced Wednesday that it is postponing its internal elections because the date clashed with a Britney Spears concert. The party explained that the concert would lead to traffic congestion in the Tel Aviv area, that it would be difficult to recruit security guards on that day because they would all be going to the concert, and that they would be not be able to hold an election event at one of their preferred venues. Therefore, they decided to postpone the elections by a day. .....

Trump Ends Obama Contracting Rule President signs resolution overturning Obama's 'blacklisting' executive order President Trump on Monday repealed Barack Obama's blacklisting rule that would have benefitted labor unions in federal contracting. Trump signed a resolution passed by the House and Senate overturning the rule, which would have forced companies bidding for government contracts to report all allegations of unfair labor practices filed against them. Previously, contractors only needed to disclose incidents in which they had been found guilty of labor violations. President Obama issued the "blacklisting" executive order in 2014, saying it would lead to "economy and efficiency in procurement...

As with much in the first weeks of the incoming Donald Trump administration, there was a last-second move to delay regulations years in the making. In this case, the Department of Labor fiduciary rule... As it stands, retirement savers lose $17 billion a year just in fees paid to advisors and funds. The vast majority of investors then fail to match the stock market indexes because of those same fees. The fiduciary rule doesn't dictate lower-cost advice. Nor does it remove expensive actively managed funds from the marketplace. Rather, it requires anyone who sells retirement advice for a living to...

The Paris region passed a law Thursday that bans foreign languages at construction sites to stop foreign labor. The “Small Business Act” wants to promote more public contracts for local businesses in the Ile de France region, which includes Paris. It includes a clause that makes it mandatory to use French as the working language at publicly-funded building projects. “This clause is necessary and targets foreign companies who come with their teams, without any of them speaking French,” Jerome Chartier, the region’s vice president, told AFP. “These companies need to improve.” Several French regions have already imposed similar language restrictions...

U.S. companies added a whopping 298,000 new jobs in February, beating economists' expectations by more than 100,000. The report from ADP, a global human resources and payroll firm, provides the first hard economic numbers from Donald Trump's first full month as president. Trump tweeted a self-congratulatory note, calling the number 'much more than expected!' Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4293622/Trump-s-month-brings-massive-employment-boom.html#ixzz4alaO42P3 Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell to near a 44-year low last week, pointing to further tightening of the labor market even as economic growth appears to have remained moderate in the first quarter.

President Donald Trump’s new nominee to run the Department of Labor is an accomplished lawyer and a rising star in the GOP’s Hispanic networks and also in the party’s pro-diversity establishment wing. The nominee, Alexander Acosta, is a Harvard graduate and a former senior justice department official under George W. Bush. From 2005, he served as a federal attorney in Florida, where he successfully prosecuted a series of high-profile cases and is now a university dean. If confirmed by the Senate to run the Department of Labor, Acosta will play an important role in overseeing and regulating the annual inflow...

I applaud President Trump for nominating Alex Acosta to be Secretary of Labor. I've known Alex for over twenty years; he and I went to law school together, and he's a smart, principled conservative with a passion for justice. His record of service, inclusion, and accomplishment spans decades. Alex has served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, as a Board Member on the National Labor Relations Board, as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and most recently as a pioneering law-school dean. His nomination to the Labor...

President Donald Trump is set to announce Alexander Acosta as his new pick to head the Department of Labor, less than a day after his first choice for the job, Andy Puzder, withdrew from consideration. Acosta served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush, selected by the president in August 2003. Acosta was a member of the National Labor Relations Board and also served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division. Most recently, he was the dean of Florida International University College of Law. If confirmed, Acosta would be...

Just saw this on Fox News. No details yet.

President Trump’s Labor Department nominee, Andy Puzder, is facing old accusations of domestic abuse against his ex-wife Lisa Fierstein. As Ed pointed out yesterday, those accusations have been denied by Fierstein since the early 1990s. She claims she was encouraged to make the accusations by her attorney at the time. Today, Fox News reports Fierstein is lashing out at efforts to dredge up the old accusations: Fierstein, though, is now speaking out against efforts by an activist group to get her divorce documents released, calling it an “unfair invasion” of her personal life and saying, “None of the events...

As cities across Ontario finalize their budgets and try to squeeze out savings to expand public transit, something doesn't add up. Too many cities, including Toronto, are missing out on hundreds of millions in savings. That's because Ontario has a labour law loophole that's putting cities, companies and taxpayers at a huge disadvantage. The heated debate over road tolls in Toronto has distracted from a far simpler way of saving for public transit expansion. Here it is: Change the way construction projects are tendered. Right now, Toronto and too many other municipalities including Hamilton, Sault Ste. Marie and the Region...

As the Trump administration continues to figure out ways to put people back to work, they have to deal with a simple demographic fact: there are tens of millions of American men, in the prime years of their working lives, who have dropped out of the labor force. It’s not that these men are trying, and failing, to get jobs. They’ve simply given up. What is causing this problem and what can be done about it? Nicholas Eberstadt explores this issue in "Men Without Work: The Invisible Crisis." Eberstadt is a long-time fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and one...

U.S. President Donald Trump's choice to lead the Labor Department admitted to employing an undocumented immigrant as a house cleaner, the kind of revelation that derailed Cabinet nominees in previous administrations. Andrew Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants Inc, is one of several Trump nominees who face strong opposition from Senate Democrats and progressive groups. In a statement late on Monday, Puzder said he and his wife had employed a housekeeper for a few years without being aware that she was not legally permitted to work in the United States. "When I learned of her status, we immediately ended...