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(VIDEO-AT-LINK)FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — Staples will close up to 225 stores in North America by the end of next year as it seeks to trim about $500 million in costs annually by 2015. The nation’s largest office-supply retailer said Thursday that nearly half of its sales are now generated online, so it will aggressively cut costs to become more efficient....

If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores? If we truly are in an "economic recovery", then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country? Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact. Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. Personally, when I published my novel I made it solely available on Amazon. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In...

The portrait painted of Millennial Americans by the Pew Research Center in its new report Millennials in Adulthood is not rosy. Sure, compared with earlier generations, Millennials (now aged 18 to 33) are exceptionally tolerant, optimistic about their economic future, and connected to friends, family, and colleagues on the “new platforms of the digital era” — from Facebook to Twitter. But this report makes clear that Millennial ties to the core human institutions that have sustained the American experiment — work, marriage, and civil society — are worryingly weak. Take work. About 80 percent of young adults aged 25...

Monday, March 10, 2014 Amnesty for All, Jobs for None Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Like a married man preparing to cheat on his wife, the Republican Party is circling around amnesty while pretending not to, making excuses, professing love for its base and then when it thinks no one is looking, it makes a run for the open border. Amnesty is a cheap date for Democrats and Republicans. For Democrats, it puts a lot of cheap votes on the table. The Democrats have been using immigrants as cheap votes before the invention of the telephone....

From a jobs perspective, the economy treaded water in February. We didn't drown in unemployment, but nor did we manage to swim closer to the prosperity shore. It was a "blah" month, in the midst of the worst economic recovery in American history. Full-time-equivalent* (FTE) jobs increased by 147,000, thanks mostly to a large decline in the number of part-time workers. This was enough to move the nation 45,000 FTE jobs closer to full employment. While this was better than average for a month in President Obama's so-called "economic recovery" (America is 2.2 million FTE jobs farther away from full...

Sun News TV Channel (Canada) dissects what the Obama administration has done to damage the US economy. An explanation is provided about how Obama's "stimulus" program increased unemployment. Video is available here: http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/putting-america-back-to-work/3309688467001

Day before yesterday I heard on the news that the National Average Labor Participation Rate hit a record low of 63.2%. I checked it on the Dept of Labor site this morning and that report was unavailable - even though it was a Google search result, indicating at one time it WAS available. Again, Obama cleans up his ugly mess.

Friday morning’s monthly jobs report [1] from the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a level of February job additions which the establishment press quickly portrayed as tremendous news.The Associated Press described the results as “a welcome surprise [2],” achieved “despite a blast of harsh winter weather.” Bloomberg News claimed [3] that “the U.S. economy is starting to shake off the effects of the severe winter weather.” Reuters heralded it [4] as an “upbeat sign for weather-beaten economy.”Opportunistic Obama administration Labor Secretary Thomas Perez crowed [5]: “We’re moving in the right direction.”Do not be fooled. Especially be wary of...

The U.S. unemployment rate edged up to 6.7 percent in February as men struggled to find work, according to the Labor Department report issued Friday. More than 160,000 men joined the ranks of the unemployed. That increase raised their unemployment rate to 6.4 percent from 6.2 percent. Particularly hard hit were African-American men. Their rate climbed to 12.9 percent last month from 12 percent in January. It did so because more African-American men began searching unsuccessfully for work last month. …

These results from Rasmussen poll done March 2-3 have got to be disconcerting for Obama. Obama’s voter base is unhappy with their life under Obama. President Obama is going to have to do a whole lot more than promise to make things better for young blacks under his new “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, because 71 percent of voters in a new poll say life for the group is the same or worse than before he came into office. Rasmussen Reports reveals that just 16 percent of likely voters believe life for young blacks has improved since Obama’s 2008 election, while...

As President Obama is once again schooled by Putin on the international stage, Obama has been able to flex his protective-pad muscles at another entity: jobs. As timid as Obama is against foreign nations that openly despise the USA, he does carry a big stick when whacking the economic sector of his fellow citizens. This week has seen more troubling news of severe consequences associated with his domestic policies. So sit down, sign up for your EBT card, and delve into the maelstrom of Obama beating up on the job market like an unwanted stepchild. First on our menu of...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry‘s cross-country campaign to promote his state’s favorable tax and regulatory conditions and attract businesses and jobs throughout his tenure hasn’t been based on him just talking the talk; Texas can absolutely walk the economic walk, too, as WaPo reports: Texas experienced stronger job growth than the rest of the nation from 2000 to 2013, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Not only that, a pair of researchers note in a Thursday research publication, but Texas leads the nation in creation of jobs at all pay levels, too. “Texas has also created more ‘good’ than...

Texas’ fast-growing job market has become a popular talking-point for conservatives. They claim that the “Texas Miracle” is proof that a low-wage economy built on union-busting and limited public interest regulations works. This, they say, is America’s future.But at The Washington Monthly, Phillip Longman takes a much closer look at Texas’ economy, and he finds that it’s nothing to which the rest of the country can or should aspire.A few excerpts: The first and most obvious question to ask about the Texas boom in jobs is how much it simply reflects the boom in Texas oil and gas production. Texas...

The job market may have reached a turning point in February when for the first time in nearly four years more of the unemployed found jobs than dropped out of the labor force. Last month 10.5 million people were unemployed, including 3.8 million who have been out of work for six months or more. But those numbers only count the people who are out of work and still looking for jobs. Even though February saw more people returning to the labor force, the percent of the population working or looking for work remains near a 30-year low due to millions...

Unemployment claims came out, and WOW! So even though our economy is down, it's still up. Or we’re up, but still down. Whatever… it’s all good, because your neighbor pays. And it’s another example of the stupid math liberals use to mask reality. The unexciting nature of the newest unemployment claims is papering over all of the downward revisions that we are seeing in other areas of the economy. For new readers the sentence above is an example of a device I employ now and again called “sarcasm.” “Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 26,000 to a seasonally adjusted...

Donald Trump is an eternal favorite among the political junkies who comprise much of the audience at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. By contrast to the long line of politicians he follows on the dais, the real-estate magnate seems refreshingly candid. The audience here laughs at his jokes and encourages his bombast. “I saw Tiger Woods this morning, Ernie Els, and Phil Mickelson, and I told them I’m going to CPAC,” he said as he took the podium on Thursday. The crowd cheered. He mentioned that he’d been to Moscow recently, because he owns the Miss Universe Pageant, and...

The Canadian Labour Congress is asking Statistics Canada to change the way it reports on unemployment, saying a more fulsome analysis of the data it collects would paint a very different picture of the country’s labour market. ... The biggest omission, says the CLC, is the category economists call “underemployment,” which captures part-time workers who want to be full time, along with the involuntary self-employed and other underutilized workers. ... The most telling number is that the employment rate — the number working as a percentage of the total in the age group — is down to 54.5% from about...

The Obama Administration is trying to regulate Americans’ livelihoods away. Will Congress do anything to stop it? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pushing regulation of “greenhouse gases”—something even its own officials have admitted would have no noticeable impact on the climate. New Heritage research shows the devastating impact it would have, however, on American manufacturing jobs.

WASHINGTON -- Initial jobless claims fell sharply last week to their lowest level in three months, the Labor Department said Thursday, as a private report showed layoffs eased in February. About 323,000 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits in the week ending Saturday, down from 349,000, the previous week, the Labor Department said. The falloff was steeper than that expected by analysts, who had forecast 338,000 first-time claims. Last week's figure was the lowest since the end of November. Also on Thursday, outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said the pace of business downsizing decreased last month. U.S....

Private employers added only 139,000 jobs to their payrolls in February and job growth in January was even less than previously thought, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report. The news is a sign that Friday's much-anticipated employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also may show that job growth hasn't been strong in recent months. Ahead of that report, Reuters writes, economists say they're expecting to hear that as few as 95,000 jobs were added to public and private payrolls last month. The nation's unemployment rate is thought to have stayed at 6.6 percent. Wednesday's report, which...