Free Republic

12,000 non-disabled adults were in Maine’s SNAP program before Jan. 1 - a number that dropped to 2,680 by the end of March. More than 9,000 Maine residents have been removed from the state's food stamp program since Republican Gov. Paul LePage's administration began enforcing work and volunteer requirements. The new rules prevent adults who are not disabled and do not have dependents from receiving food stamps for more than three months - unless they work at least 20 hours a week, participate in a work-training program or meet volunteering requirements. DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew said the goal of the...

The March monthly jobs report released on Friday actually shares two striking similarities with Easter (hint: jellybeans are not one of them). One similarity is that, in each case, our attention is often focused on the wrong things. The labor market headlines, as usual, are focused on job growth and the unemployment rate. Employers added just 126,000 jobs in March, which, together with a reduction of 69,000 in the job creation estimates for January and February, suggests that the pace of recovery is slower than previously thought. Nevertheless, with unemployment rate steady at 5.5 percent — just fractions of a...

The Robopocalypse for workers may be inevitable. In this vision of the future, super-smart machines will best humans in pretty much every task. A few of us will own the machines, a few will work a bit — perhaps providing "Made by Man" artisanal goods — while the rest will live off a government-provided income. Silicon-based superintelligence and robots will dramatically alter labor markets — to name but one example, the most common job in most U.S. states probably will no longer be truck driver. But what about right now? If you're unemployed or working part-time instead of full-time, or...

<p>Eating meals out in Seattle just got more expensive as tens of thousands of low wage workers got a raise this week to $11 an hour. It was the first scheduled pay increase on the way to $15 an hour, the highest minimum wage in the country.</p>

It is too early to say whether this morning’s seriously disappointing jobs report — 126,000 jobs added in March, only about half of what was expected — is the end of the run of strong jobs growth we saw for most of 2014. (Some called it the Obama boom; I prefer to think of it as the Mitch-McConnell-is-almost-majority-leader boomlet.) But it’s not a good sign, combined with the fact that January and February’s numbers were revised down noticeably, which is sometimes seen as evidence of deeper trends. Growth in the first three months of the year has now averaged 197,000...

The number of Americans 16 years and older who did not participate in the labor force—meaning they neither had a job nor actively sought one in the last four weeks—rose from 92,898,000 in February to 93,175,000 in March, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the first time the number of Americans out of the labor force has exceeded 93 million. Also from February to March, the labor force participation rate dropped from 62.8 percent to 62.7 percent, matching a 37-year low. Five times in the last twelve months, the participation rate has been...

U.S. employers added 126,000 jobs in March as the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.5 percent, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists polled by Thomson Reuters had expected net job growth of 250,000 last month. February was revised down from 295,000 to 264,000. The drop in March is under the average 269,000 jobs added over the previous 12 months. Job creation jumped in February despite harsh winter weather, and the U.S. has added at least 200,000 jobs per month for 12 consecutive months, a feat not seen in 20 years. However, the sharp gains in job creation in recent months...

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, suggesting the labor market continues to expand at a solid clip even as economic growth has stalled. Sustained labor market strength supports views that the sharp slowdown in activity is probably temporary. A host of factors ranging from bad weather to a strong dollar has sucked momentum from the economy in the first quarter. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 268,000 for the week ended March 28, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the lowest level...

The recent spate of softening economic indicators continues today with the ADP employment report for March. Private-sector job growth came to 189,000, the lowest result in more than a year, and the manufacturing sector dropped for the first time in 14 months:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Private sector employment increased by 189,000 jobs from February to March according to the March ADP National Employment Report®. …Payrolls for businesses with 49 or fewer employees increased by 108,000 jobs in March, up from 103,000 in February. Employment among companies with 50-499 employees increased by 62,000 jobs, up from 57,000 the...

The great conundrum of the U.S. economy today is that we have record numbers of working age people out of the labor ‎force at the same time we have businesses desperately trying to find workers. As an example, the American Transportation Research Institute estimates there are 30,000 – 35,000 trucker jobs that could be filled tomorrow if workers would take these jobs–a shortage that could rise to 240,000 by 2022. While the jobs market overall remains weak, demand is high for in certain sectors. For skilled and reliable mechanics, welders, engineers, electricians, plumbers, computer technicians, and nurses, jobs are plentiful;...

Imagine if the current President were a Republican, and if during the second half of his second term, after having been elected both times with record turnout by blacks, the black unemployment rate remained stagnant at 11 percent while the black poverty rate hit a record high of 27 percent. What would black politicians be saying about that Republican President? We don’t really need to answer that question, do we? But for arguments sake, let’s imagine that almost seven years after the great recession the country was basically back to work, with an official unemployment rate haven fallen from almost...

Earlier today, the supposedly resurgent Eurozone reported a February unemployment number of 11.3%, which not only missed consensus but was worse than the highest estimate. This miss meant the recent steady trend of improvement would have halted if January's unemployment print of 11.3% hadn't been revised higher by 10 bps.  Still, 11.3% is better than the 11.8% reported a year ago, and as  the chart below shows, the trend is certainly Europe's friend if only for the time being. One does wonder, however, how much of the improvement is due to the borrowing the BLS' favorite tradition of lowering...

It highlights the huge gap between Obama’s promise that his progressive, big-government economic policies would jump-start the economy, and the hard reality of America’s complex society and economy. The failure of Obama-economics was highlighted March 28, when the federal government admitted that the economy grew only 2.2 percent in 2014. ... Since 2009, the U.S. population has grown from 305 million to 321 million, including 11 million illegals. ... Even as he doubles down on his high-regulation, high-immigration policies, Obama insists that his top priority is increasing wages. ... But he’s continuing to rapidly add immigrants to the nation’s flooded...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose marginally last week, indicating the labor market remained on solid footing despite slowing economic growth. Output has slowed in the first quarter, undercut by a harsh winter, a strong dollar, weaker overseas growth and a now-settled labor dispute at West Coast ports, mostly transitory factors that should fade by the second quarter. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday acknowledged the moderation in growth, but maintained its upbeat view of the jobs market and signaled it was nearing an interest rate increase by dropping the reference to being "patient" from its...

Federal agencies made $125 billion in improper payments last year, including tax credits to people who didn’t qualify, Medicare payments for treatments that might not be necessary and unemployment benefits for people who were actually working, said a government report released Monday. The level of improper payments was a new high after several years of declines. In addition to fraud, the errors included overpayments and underpayments, as well payments made without proper documentation. While the errors were spread among 22 federal agencies, three programs stood out: Medicare, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Together, the three programs accounted for...

For some time, I've been collecting news stories about robots and jobs. By robots, I mean almost any automated process that substitutes machines for people. Here are some examples: ● The restaurant chain Chili's installed 45,000 computer tablets in its U.S. locations, says The Post. The tablets enable customers to pay their bills, play games and place some orders. ● One hotel is introducing a robot bellhop that delivers items to guests' rooms, reports the New York Times. The same story mentions automated golf caddies. Another Times story reports that the German firm Daimler has demonstrated a self-driving truck. ●...

I don't know too much about Jim Rickards, just found this to be an interesting video about the overall economy and some tidbits about what our government agencies are up to. The video is a 45 minutes long interview of sorts and discussion. Just posting in the event other are interested.

Last Friday, we learned that the official “unemployment rate” has fallen to 5.5 percent. Since an unemployment rate of 5 percent is considered to be “full employment” by many economists, many in the mainstream media took this as a sign that the U.S. economy has almost fully “recovered” since the last recession. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, some Federal Reserve officials believe that “the U.S. economy is already at full employment“. But how can this possibly be? It certainly does not square with reality. Personally, I know people that have been struggling with unemployment for years and...

THE Aboriginal leader who backed a $40 billion gas plant in the Kimberley as a way of creating indigenous jobs has attacked “extreme nutter” environmentalists who he says derailed the plan but have since done nothing to help the region’s impoverished people. Wayne Bergmann, a businessman and former head of the Kimberley Land Council, told an oil and gas conference in Perth yesterday that suicide rates and unemployment were rising in the Kimberley due to a paucity of jobs, especially for younger people. Telstra director Geoff Cousins and singers Missy Higgins and John Butler were among those who opposed the...

The table that I assembled is in response to vague references that we see and hear like "the BLS said", "the WSJ said", "radio/TV/Blog/column said" . . . the table has links directly to the original data. It's too large to post repeatedly on threads though I do hope to keep it current quarterly (with annualized data) until Election 2016. And change/add columns as needed.