Free Republic

When you combine Variety's story about a 19% drop in entertainment industry jobs, and The Hollywood Reporter's story about the 2014 box office already being written off as a "disaster," things look pretty glum in the business of show. And probably for good reason. No one expected Summer 2014 to tank. No one. Everyone's saying "wait till next year," but this year there was a Spider-Man, some X-Men, a bunch of Apes, more Transformers, ..., this past Labor Day weekend was the worst since the post- 9/11 Labor Day weekend. No one knows why. No one can explain it. And...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but that probably does not signal a material shift in labor market conditions as claims remain near their pre-recession levels. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 315,000 for the week ended Sept. 6, the highest level since late June, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 300,000 last week. The period included the Labor Day holiday...

I guess I’ve been a little off my game lately, butt in my defense, I hadn’t even noticed until Little Mo pointed out that I’ve been wasting a lot of valuable Ethernet time/space yacking about racist topics like ISIS/ISIL/IS/ISZ, Benghazi, IRS, Fast & Furious and how Putin is rebuilding the Soviet Union one country at a time. As a result, he reminded me that I’ve been giving short shrift to the more important issues facing our country, like renegade schools that are dumping Lady M’s “Healthy Lunch & Snack Programs.” Because kids just won’t eat them. So they’re hungry all...

On the average day, an unemployed American is more likely to be shopping—for things other than groceries and gas---than to be looking for a new job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 18.9 percent of Americans who were unemployed (in surveys conducted from 2009 through 2013) spent time in job search and interviewing activities on an average day, according to BLS. Yet 40.8 percent of the unemployed did some kind of shopping on the average day--either in a store, by telephone, or on the Internet. 22.5 percent of the unemployed, according to BLS, were shopping for...

In a burst of unwarranted enthusiasm, Forbes magazine’s international automotive analyst, Joann Muller, announced gleefully that the rise of the auto-making business in Mexico represented not only more bad news for Detroit, but was the result of “wise trade policies south of the border.” In the promotion for her article, Muller asked rhetorically: “Washington, are you listening?” She concluded that, if those trade policies, better known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), work so well for Mexico, Washington should do more of it for the United States. Not a single word in her lengthy article was devoted to...

Amid all the focus on boosting the minimum wage and legislating living wages, virtually no one seems to have noticed what is happening to the workweek in low-wage industries. Since December 2012, private industries paying up to about $14.50 an hour have added, on net, 972,000 nonsupervisory jobs with an average workweek of a mere 17.7 hours, an IBD analysis finds. That doesn't mean new employees are being hired for such few hours. Rather, it reflects a combination of reduced hours in existing jobs and short workweeks for newly created jobs. Overall, in these low-wage industries which employ 30 million...

Green Sky workers being told that the recycling plant is closing. A prominent Clifton-based recycling company abruptly closed its doors on Friday, informing more than 100 employees that they had worked their final day while dozens of North Jersey towns scrambled to forge temporary arrangements with other collectors. Green Sky Industries, which promoted itself as the stateÂ’s largest private recycler with 75 municipal contracts, many in Bergen and Passaic counties, announced in a letter to towns on Thursday that it was shutting both of its plants, in Clifton and Carteret in Middlesex County. The companyÂ’s Clifton employees on Friday were...

Sitting at her street vending booth with products arrayed neatly on a sequined purple tablecloth, Jackie Lloyd reflects nostalgically on the days when she had a steady salary and regular hours.. That was four years ago, before the 39-year-old was laid off from her job as an elementary school cafeteria worker and mounting bills forced her to venture into self-employment. Now the Pico-Union resident hops from location to location, selling body oils, shea butter, soap and incense. She moves when nearby businesses complain or she feels unsafe. Some days, her sales bring in $150. Others, they don't break $20....

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Obama economic recovery is a complete sham! Barack the Barista, aided by his media muppets and trusty teleprompter, continues to tout the “common core” 6.1% unemployment rate while shouting “America is back” from the top of Mount Hypocrisy amidst adoring crowds of mindless Kool-Aid drinkers. As expected, our so-called President is excluding one teensy-weensy, minor detail: Over 92 MILLION Americans, more than a third of the country, are not working! Workforce participation is at an atrocious 62.8%, the lowest rate since Carter’s implosion in 1978, and food stamp recipients have...

Even though there were 4.7 million jobs openings in June, the most since 2001, employers are waiting longer to fill them than they have in more than a decade, according to an index created by University of Chicago economist Steven Davis. It's taking 25 working days on average to fill vacancies, a 13-year high, according to the Dice-DFH Vacancy Duration Measure. And for companies with 5,000 employees or more, it's taking more than twice that long -- an average of 58.1 working days. In the accompanying video, Davis points to a few key reasons that could explain why. "The economy...

Shockingly enough the numbers are bad and performing below the usual optimistic expectations. Just like every other time.I’ll just give you the headlines for a taste of how frantically the media is spinning the bad news. A Disappointing Jobs Report May Mask Economy’s Strength – NPRJobs Report: Not Good, but Not Terrible Either – New York TimesDon’t freak out about bad jobs report – Washington PostWhy weak August jobs report probably a fluke – MarketWatchThe Awful New Jobs Report Has One Silver Lining – New Republic It’s a fluke! There’s a silver lining! The bad news is really good news!...

For the struggling Spanish shopkeeper or the Portuguese restaurant owner, the European Central Bank’s latest economic stimulus plans won’t likely provide much relief anytime soon. If ever. Confronting a stalled economy and painful unemployment across Europe, the ECB is doing what it can. It surprised economists and investors Thursday by cutting its benchmark interest rate to a record-low 0.05 percent. And it announced plans to pump money into the financial system by buying bonds backed by assets such as auto and credit-card loans. But Europe faces a crushing array of problems—from burdensome regulations to growth-killing budget policies—that analysts say remain...

(CNSNews.com) – While unemployment nationwide is 6.1%, the unemployment rate for black Americans at 11.4% is more than double the rate for white Americans, who have an unemployment rate of 5.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The unemployment rate for Latino Americans, at 7.5%, is also lower than the unemployment rate for blacks, the BLS data show. For black Americans, age 16 and older, seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate between July and August stayed the same at 11.4%, and that is up from the 10.7% rate in June. The last time the black unemployment rate was 11.4%...

CNSNews.com) - A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent in six of the last twelve months, but prior to last October had not fallen that low since 1978. BLS employment statistics are based on the civilian noninstitutional population, which consists of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution such as a prison,...

Job growth cooled in August, with nonfarm payrolls adding just 142,000 even as the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent, according to the Labor Department. The fall in the headline rate came as labor-force participation fell, declining to 62.8 percent, or 64,000 workers, tying the 2014 bottom and remaining at the lowest level since 1978. Economists expected payroll growth of 225,000 in August following July's upwardly revised 212,000. The unemployment rate was forecast to drop to 6.1 percent from 6.2 percent. August's number are a notoriously volatile set, with 2013's initially reported 169,000 ultimately revised up to 238,000. In 2011,...

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.

Businesses in the U.S. added 204,000 jobs in August, led by broad-based gains across industries and company sizes, according to the ADP National Employment report released Thursday. The figure fell short of the consensus estimate of 220,000, and was down from the 218,000 jobs the group said the economy added in July. Continued monthly gains in job growth would signal to Federal Reserve policymakers labor market tightening, which could put pressure on employers to raise wages if labor is scarce. Wage gains, which have yet to really materialize, could in turn enable households to pickup their pace of spending and...

The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week rose more than expected, dampening optimism over the strength of the labor market, official data showed on Thursday. In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending August 30 increased by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 302,000 from the previous week’s total of 298,000. Analysts had expected jobless claims to rise by 2,000 to 300,000 last week. Continuing jobless claims in the week ended August 23 declined to 2.464 million from 2.528 million...

350 more U.S. troops are headed to Iraq to fight a war that Obama declared over almost exactly four years ago today. “President Obama declared an end on Tuesday to the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq,” wrote the New York Times on the last day of August in 2010, “saying that the United States has met its responsibility to that country and that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.”Like a lot of journalism, what the New York Times wrote that day was more of an elegy for the Obama administration and its brand of progressivism...

When Republicans want to support their position that Americans have become dependent on welfare, they frequently point to the number of workers on food stamps. In 2012, Senator Rand Paul called the program “out of control.” In 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions told the Daily Caller, “There is no doubt, if this country isn’t willing to look under the hood of the food stamp program as we try to bring our surging debt under control, we are obviously not serious about what we are doing.”Paul, Sessions and their Republican colleagues are right that the number of food stamp beneficiaries grew considerably...