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Unemployment for workers without bachelor’s degrees fell to the lowest rate on record in May, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday. The extremely low joblessness for less-educated workers is a sign that the decadelong expansion is benefiting economically vulnerable people and is reaching workers at at the margins of the labor force. The unemployment rate for workers over the age of 25 without four-year degrees fell to 3.4%, the lowest in records extending back to 1992, just barely beating out the marks set in the dot-com boom. The unemployment figures are adjusted for seasonal variation.

Two in states won by Clinton and six in states that backed Trump ANALYSIS — The fight for the Senate starts off with only a handful of seats at risk. And that’s being generous. A few other states are worth your attention because of their competitiveness or questions about President Donald Trump’s impact, but almost two-thirds of Senate contests this cycle start as “safe” for the incumbent party and are likely to remain that way. Of course, a retirement or a public scandal could create a contest where one should not exist, and an implosion of the Trump presidency could...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that was passed in December 2017 saw the majority of Americans get a tax break. The law was widely criticized as a boon for the wealthy and large businesses which saw their corporate tax rate drop from 35% to 21% last year. According to analysis from the Tax Policy Center, 65% of Americans received a tax cut. Roughly 6% paid more.

FOREST GROVE, Ore. (AP) - An Oregon lumber company is cutting its workforce by about 40%, citing the state's "regulatory and tax creep." The Stimson Lumber Company announced Friday that it would lay off 60 jobs from its Forest Grove operations. CEO Andrew Miller said environmental permit fees, Oregon's Clean Fuels Tax and pending cap and trade legislation are stacking up the cost of doing business in the state. The company said it will now shift some of that work to Idaho and Montana, where it cost 5% to 7% less to produce lumber products. In Oregon, Stimson also operates...

Democratic Party candidates for President in 2020 have been claiming that Trump’s economic successes are really the result of Obama administration policies. A while back, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis created a summary report that measured the American economy while President Obama and the Democrats were in control. It’s a trip down memory lane, and shows that Democrat claims about the “Obama Economy” are nothing but smoke and mirrors designed to fool the American people. While Democrats were in charge everything that should have been up, is down, and everything that should have been down, is up. Take...

Over the past half-decade or so it’s become fashionable to claim that millions of Americans, including many families with kids, are mired in “extreme poverty” — they’re not just below the poverty line, and they’re not even in “deep poverty,” defined at half the poverty line; they’re making do on less than $2 per person per day, the kind of threshold we use to measure deprivation in the Third World.I wrote last year about some research led by the American Enterprise Institute’s Bruce Meyer that devastates these claims — research that he and three coauthors have now expanded and updated....

The Trump administration on Friday announced that it would allow for the year-round sale of gasoline with higher concentrations of ethanol. The action addresses a rule the Environmental Protection Agency had in place preventing the sale of so-called E15 fuel, which contains 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline, between June 1 and Sept. 15. The purpose was to prevent air pollution and curb dependence on foreign petroleum, but the ban has stopped some retailers from selling E15 at all because of the need to change out pumps.

You may remember all the glowing predictions made for the December 2017 tax cuts by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration: Wages would soar for the rank-and-file, corporate investments would surge, and the cuts would pay for themselves. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has just published a deep dive into the economic impact of the cuts in their first year, and emerges from the water with a different picture. The CRS finds that the cuts have had virtually no effect on wages, haven’t contributed to a surge in investment, and haven’t come close to paying for themselves. Nor have they...

Democrats across the ideological spectrum want their party to dedicate one of its presidential primary debates to climate change — despite the risk of exposing their own divides. At least five presidential candidates have backed fellow presidential contender Jay Inslee's idea for a climate-centric debate, in a sign of the issue's growing profile among Democratic voters. But a public debate might also force Democratic contenders to confront policy differences they have so far papered over, including how quickly they would push the U.S. to shift away from the fossil fuels that provide union jobs. The candidates would also face pressure...

Early on in his eight years as the mayor of this city, when he typically dressed in a tieless ensemble of work boots and corduroys, Bernie Sanders one day left City Hall and found a ticket on the windshield of his rusty Volkswagen Dasher. The offense: This was the mayor’s spot, and, surely, a cop had thought, this was not the mayor’s car. But it was. It matched perfectly with both Sanders’ image as a scrappy advocate of the little guy and his own shaky financial reality. It was the beginning of the 1980s, and he was approaching 40, a...

It turns out even democratic socialist authors can rake in cash. Just ask Bernie Sanders. The independent senator from Vermont has enjoyed a recent windfall driven by book deals. In both 2016 and 2017, Sanders and his wife, Jane, had adjusted gross income of about $1.1 million, according to tax returns his 2020 presidential campaign released last month. The couple followed it up with about $560,000 in income last year. The totals mark a stark increase from 2015, when they made roughly $240,000. [CNBC is looking at how top 2020 presidential candidates accumulated their wealth. Check back for more updates.]...

New Baltimore, MICH. — Robert Rasch had never voted for president before 2016. Then Donald Trump came along, and finally there was a candidate he could get excited about. Rasch admired Trump’s business background and political courage. “For somebody to stand up and run for president that has no political background, that’s a set of brass,” he said. Rasch is one of millions of so-called lost voters whom Trump coaxed back to the voting booth in 2016. Rasch has already decided he’ll be voting for Trump again in 2020, based largely on the president’s stewardship of the economy.

Without pension reform, progressive income tax amendment guarantees tax hikes on Illinois’ middle class. ( Full title). The current progressive income tax proposal would fail to pay down the state's unfunded liability while damaging Illinois' economy. On May 20, Democrats in the Illinois House Revenue & Finance Committee approved Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s prized progressive tax constitutional amendment. While the Senate had previously passed a new income tax structure – already different from the governor’s original proposal – the House Committee also passed the amendment without putting in income tax rates. ... progressive tax proponents need to face that without pension...

The next time President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet will likely be at the G-20 summit in Japan next month. The leaders of the world’s two largest economies will no doubt aim to resolve their long-simmering trade dispute that has the U.S. and China going tit-for-tat on tariffs. If they fail to reach an agreement, there’s a good chance Trump will follow through on his threat to place additional 25% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. A new report by Citi estimates the impact of additional tariffs on virtually all Chinese imports would be far...

As things stand, America is likely to lose the tech war with China. The stock market should be sending a message to President Trump. U.S. semiconductor stocks are down 20% in the past month, and the broad market has been in freefall for a week. This is a war we can win, by mobilizing American ingenuity to produce technology that will crush the competition. No-one ever won a war by trying to stop someone else from doing something. I'm an Always Trumper, and I want the president to win another term. But he's risking the U.S. economy and his re-election...

Economist Gary Shilling predicts that not only will President Donald Trump win the seemingly endless trade war with China, but in the long run the U.S. will be better off. “People say nobody wins trade wars. Yeah, in the short-run you don’t, but in the long-run…the U.S. will be better off,” Shilling recently told Business Insider. “When you’ve got plenty of supply in the world, and I think you do. It’s the buyer that has the upper hand not the seller. The buyer has the ultimate power and who’s the buyer? U.S. is the buyer, China is the seller,” he...

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders admitted Tuesday that Health Care for All will mean more taxes for most. “What we have chosen not to do … is to tell you how I’m going to raise every nickel in a $3.5 trillion budget,” the Democratic presidential candidate said as he answered questions at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire. “That’s something that is going to have to be discussed. So I wanted to lay out the program as to what it would mean and to tell you that it will cost you and ordinary Americans a lot less than you...

Allan Lichtman doesn't mind swimming against the political tide. Lichtman, a professor at American University in Washington, DC, was the most prominent voice predicting Donald Trump's victory in the run-up to the 2016 election. When Trump won, it marked the 9th(!) straight presidential election where Lichtman had correctly predicted the Electoral College winner. (That's all the way back to 1984, for you math wizards.) In short: Lichtman is someone the political world should listen to. So I reached out to him on Tuesday to see what he thought of Trump's current chances at a second term next November. Here's what...

Every presidential primary ends with one winner and a lot of losers. Some might argue that one or two once-little-known candidates who overperform low expectations get to enjoy a form of moral victory. (Ben Carson and Rick Perry might be happy how the 2016 cycle ended, with both taking roles in Trump’s cabinet. Bernie Sanders might be, too.) But running for president and flopping is a deep disappointment, and while the occasional figure can emerge from a failed bid to move on to different victories — Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole became senators, Jerry Brown became governor again, Howard Dean...

Donald Trump is absolutely convinced that he will win his re-election bid next year. The New York Times opinion section seems increasingly convinced he’s right. In the last three days, Gray Lady readers have gotten dire warnings that, even as unpopular as Trump seems to be, defeating him might be well-nigh impossible — at least for this current crop of Democrats.Steve Rattner, a former Treasury Secretary in the Barack Obama administration, writes today that it’s still the economy, stupid. The current boom times give Trump a formidable tailwind, Rattner warns, but not an insurmountable one: The economy invariably ranks...