Free Republic

The IRS has spent $96.5 million on office furniture under the Obama administration and is now claiming it has insufficient funding to adequately serve taxpayers. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified before the House two weeks ago about the IRS’ need for additional funding for the upcoming fiscal year. The IRS is currently seeking an increase of $1.2 billion—a 7 percent raise over its FY 2014 $11.29 billion budget. It would bring the agency’s FY 2015 budget to $12.48 billion. A review of contracts by the Washington Free Beacon shows the IRS in the past five fiscal years has spent $96.5...

Here's a riddle: Many Republicans deny it's happening. Some Democrats don't want to talk about it. What is it? The answer is the growing U.S. economy, on pace to expand as much as 3.5 percent this year, about the best performance in the industrialized world. Unemployment has fallen from 10 percent to about 6.3 percent and consumer confidence is at a six-year high. Better economic data could help persuade voters in November to look past President Barack Obama's weak approval ratings and his unpopular healthcare law and give Democrats enough lift to hold onto the Senate and limit their losses...

For the first time in 3 decades, businesses are collapsing faster than they're being created. That's the concluisions of a study done by the Brooking Institution, which looked at business creation since 1978.Washington Post: The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978. Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study -- 2009, 2010 and 2011 -- businesses were collapsing faster than they...

A record 92,594,000 Americans were not in the labor force in April as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, according to BLS's non-seasonally adjusted data, there were 91,630,000 Americans not in the labor force. In April, that increased by 964,000 people to an all-time record of 92,594,000. The previous record was 92,534,000, set in January of this year. The BLS's seasonally-adjusted number for people not in the labor force--which was 92,018,00 for April--was also an all-time record. This was up 988,000...

Despite the unemployment rate plummeting, more than 92 million Americans remain out of the labor force. The unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent in April from 6.7 percent in March, the lowest it has been since September 2008 when it was 6.1 percent. The sharp drop, though, occurred because the number of people working or seeking work fell. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count people not looking for a job as unemployed. The bureau noted that the civilian labor force dropped by 806,000 last month, ... The amount (not seasonally adjusted) of Americans not in the labor force...

A study recently published by the National Employment Law Project reports that a plurality of the new jobs created under the Administration’s economic policies have been low-wage jobs. Data analyzed in the study indicated that while 22% of the jobs lost during the recession were low-wage, 44% of the jobs created since then are low-wage. “If proof were needed that this president is on the side of the little guy this is it,” said Jason Furman, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. “Expanding job opportunities for those with little education and few skills focuses on the population cohort...

...Five years ago, “green jobs” were all the rage in Washington. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was rolled out with a win-win agenda aimed at fixing the economy and healing the environment at once. Candidate Obama touted a “blueprint” for a green economy, with plans to create 5 million green jobs. Though federal green initiatives have provided vital seed money for wind farms and solar-generation projects nationwide, the blue-collar workers who have the most to gain from the projected clean-tech boom are still struggling to find any job, much less a green one. Indeed, some environmentalists say that green...

U.S. employers hired workers at the fastest clip in more than two years in April, pointing to a rebound in economic growth after a dreadful winter and keeping the Federal Reserve on track to end bond purchases this year. The brightening outlook was, however, tempered somewhat by a sharp increase in the number of people dropping out of the labor force, which pushed the unemployment rate to a 5-1/2 year low of 6.3 percent. Wage growth also was stagnant. About 806,000 people dropped out of the labor force in April, unwinding the previous months' gains. That helped to push down...

Funky job reports are not unusual, and the employment data for April certainly fits the bill. How else to explain the biggest gain in hiring in more than two years – at the same time the labor force shrank by the second largest amount in 32 years. --snip-- What’s also odd about the decline in the labor force is how it happened. The number of so-called re-entrants – unemployed workers who have started looking for jobs again – fell by a whopping 417,000. That’s the biggest drop since the government began keeping records in 1967. Another factor could be the...

The household survey is simply insane. Do not pay any attention to it. Do not make eye contact. Just calmly walk away. It’s simply not believable that the labor market contracted so violently according to one survey, while at the same time a separate survey of business establishments showed strong payroll growth of 288,000. Consider this: The jobless rate fell because 733,000 fewer people were considered unemployed. That’s the largest one-month decline since 1949, when unemployment fell by 920,000 when two large national strikes concluded. Nothing like that happened in April.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. labor-force participation rate sank to 62.8% in April from 63.2% in March to match a 35-year low, the government reported Friday. Some 806,000 people dropped out of the labor force, according to Labor Department figures.

A majority of the new jobs created in the four years of the recovery have been in low-wage sectors, according to a new report released this week. “Deep into the recovery, job growth is still heavily concentrated in lower-wage industries,” said the National Employment Law Project, a progressive research group which has been pushing for Congress to increase the minimum wage. Lower-wage industries accounted for 22% of job losses during the recession but 44% of employment growth over the past four years.

The number of people filing for state unemployment benefits rose for the second straight week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The number of initial claims in the week ending April 26 rose 14,000 to 344,000, which is the highest level since the end of February. The gain came as a surprise, as the consensus forecast of Wall Street economists was for claims to fall to 320,000.

Sony Corp slashed its operating profit estimate by nearly 70 percent for the financial year ended March 31, saying it expects its exit from PCs to add nearly $300 million in extra costs as it struggles to stem losses on electronics. The Japanese consumer electronics giant on Thursday cut its operating profit forecast....

The U.S. economy stalled in the first three months of 2014, but don't panic yet as it's probably just the winter weather effect. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, grew at a 0.1% annual pace in the first quarter, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Wednesday. That's brutally slow, even by sluggish post-recession standards. Since the Great Recession ended in June 2009, the economy has been growing at a rate of about 2% to 3% per year.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked one of President Barack Obama's top legislative priorities, a bill to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in five years. On a nearly party-line vote of 54-42, supporters fell short of the 60 votes that would have been needed to end a procedural roadblock against the legislation in the Democratic-led Senate. Just one Republican, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, joined Democrats.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday voted unanimously to reduce its bond-buying stimulus program for the fourth straight meeting, to $45 billion a month from $55 billion. The central bank now thinks the economy is strong enough to do without the stimulus and the Fed aims to end the bond-buying program by late 2014, barring any sudden deterioration in growth.

Growth in the U.S. economy slowed to a miserly 0.1% annual pace in the first quarter from 2.6% at the end of 2013, a bout of weakness spurred by one of the worst winters in years. Consumer spending, the main driver of the U.S. economy, actually rose 3% after a strong 3.3% gain in the fourth quarter, but the increase was driven mostly by higher outlays on utilities and health care, according to preliminary data released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday. Yet business investment on equipment, another key economic cog, fell 5.5% to mark the biggest drop in almost...

...the Obama administration Tuesday opened the door for states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for roadway repairs. The proposal, contained in a four-year, $302 billion White House transportation bill, would reverse a long-standing federal prohibition on most interstate tolling.

An audit released this month on Oregon’s dismal track record shifting people off of welfare and into jobs offers a detailed look at the effects of the recession. The audit from the Oregon Secretary of State's Office includes maps and charts that illustrate the downturn’s toll, including a sharp rise in welfare recipients and a reduction in state services. Data show bad news on every front for many Oregonians: Unemployment spiked from 2007-09 and remains above the national rate. And most of the jobs lost in 2008-12 were middle-wage – the kind that keep families off of welfare. The jobs...