Free Republic

The reason why despite the better than expected increase in jobs the US unemployment rate rose from 5.4% to 5.5% even as the number of Unemployed workers rose by 125K to 8,674MM was due to the 397K influx into the civilian labor force which rose to 157.459MM, a new record high in the series, which on the surface would suggest declining slack as more people who have been traditionally left out of the employment calculation go back into the labor pool.Which aslo meant that since the total US civilian non-institutional population rose by half this number, the number of...

Blunting worries about the American economy’s momentum after a stretch of lackluster growth this year, the government reported on Friday that employers added a hefty 280,000 jobs in May, well above the average monthly totals logged over the last year. The official unemployment rate ticked up to 5.5 percent, as more Americans returned to the labor force and returned to actively looking for work. At the same time, hourly wages rose 0.3 percent last month, finally providing workers with some long-awaited gains. United States markets were expected to open lower on concerns that the strong report would provide further reason...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup's U.S. Job Creation Index reached +32 for the month of May, the highest Gallup has found, by one point, since 2008. It slightly exceeds the +31 found in April, and the +30 found in September 2014. Shortly after Gallup began tracking job creation in January 2008, the index nosedived as the Great Recession wreaked havoc on the economy. After remaining in negative territory for most of 2009, the index slowly recovered, reaching +30 in September 2014. It then dipped slightly and stayed between +27 and +29 for six months. More recently, it increased two points in...

RUSH: I mentioned in the previous hour working 9-to-5 is becoming a less popular way to make a living. This is an AP story. Now, listen. This is absurd, and this is part and parcel of the ongoing Democrat Party agenda. This is how you cover for a rotten economy. "If you want an income, or you're an employer looking for help, it may be time to scrap the idea of the traditional 9-to-5 arrangement." Yes. "For workers --" I prefer employees or associates "-- it has become easier and less risky to go solo. Affordable health-insurance plans, which kept...

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has begun layoffs that are expected to total more than 5,000 by next year, people familiar with the matter said. This latest phase of cuts started earlier this year and would eliminate at least 2% of the bank’s JPM, workforce over the next year. The moves come as the nation’s largest bank overhauls its 5,570 branches to rely more on technology and less on human tellers. Chairman and Chief Executive James Dimon said Wednesday that the average J.P. Morgan Chase branch would lose one employee over the next two years, mostly through attrition....

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Appalachian coal mining suffered a double blow on Friday, as Murray Energy announced plans to lay off more than 1,800 miners, most from West Virginia, and Alpha Natural Resources told 439 more Mountain State miners they could be out of work. The announcements continue a grim employment trend for the Appalachian coalfields. On Friday, St. Clairsville, Ohio-based Murray Energy said it told 1,417 workers at five West Virginia mines that their jobs must be eliminated....

In Obama's world - our military's top priority is to fight the weather.  PRESIDENT OBAMA: Climate change is one of those most severe threats. This is not just a problem for countries on the coasts or for certain regions of the world. Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune. So I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act and we need...

WASHINGTON—The number of Americans applying for first-time unemployment benefits rose last week, but remained at a historically low level consistent with an improving labor market. Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs across the economy, increased by 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 274,000 in the week ended May 16, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected 271,000 new claims. “U.S. labor market momentum remains solid in mid-May,” Barclays economist Jesse Hurwitz said in a note to clients. The prior week’s claims were left unrevised at 264,000. The Labor Department said no special factors...

First-time claims for state unemployment benefits were expected to total 271,000 in the most recent week, up from 264,000 reported a week earlier.

At a time when 8.5 million Americans still don't have jobs, some 40 percent have given up even looking. The revelation, contained in a new survey Wednesday showing how much work needs to be done yet in the U.S. labor market, comes as the labor force participation rate remains mired near 37-year lows. A tight jobs market, the skills gap between what employers want and what prospective employees have to offer, and a benefits program that, while curtailed from its recession level, still remains obliging have combined to keep workers on the sidelines, according to a Harris poll of 1,553...

If you've been unsuccessful in your job search, it might be time to start looking in other parts of the country. But before you pack up and go, you'll want to consider which cities have the best career opportunities, the happiest workers, and the lowest cost of living. To help, online careers community Glassdoor just released its latest report on the 25 best cities for jobs right now. These metro areas stand out for having the highest Glassdoor "Job Score," which was determined by weighting three factors equally: how easy it is to get a job (hiring opportunity), how affordable...

Hustlers and people with little understanding want us to believe that today’s black problems are the continuing result of a legacy of slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. The fact is that most of the social pathology seen in poor black neighborhoods is entirely new in black history. Let’s look at some of it. Today the overwhelming majority of black children are raised in single female-headed families. As early as the 1880s, three-quarters of black families were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black families were two-parent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to...

At its height, Nevada was ground zero for the Great Recession. Unemployment topped 14 percent, the highest in the nation. The state led in per-capita bankruptcy filings. And one in every 10 homes faced foreclosure. But while Nevada’s jobless and foreclosure rates still rank high relative to other states, the raw numbers have plummeted. Lawmakers who agonized about public employee layoffs and an overburdened unemployment insurance fund a few years ago are now fretting about a shortage of teachers and want to implement new taxes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And in another sign of the times, they want...

About 10% of adults of working age have at best marginal ties with the economy ___ Last month, when Baltimore was burning after a young African-American man died in police custody (six officers were subsequently charged), I did a Google search to find what David Simon thought about it. Simon, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, was the creator and show runner of “The Wire,” which ran for five seasons on HBO and which Entertainment Weekly called the greatest television show ever. It was a brilliant narrative of the struggle for survival in a violent, drug-riddled Baltimore neighborhood much...

Zenith Education Group, a Minnesota-based provider of career-school training and operator of Everest College campuses in metro Denver, is laying off 131 people at its Thornton call center. "We had a reduction in the student population and we are merging some call centers to the one located in Tampa," said Zenith spokesperson Krissy Humenesky, referring to a call center at an Everest college in Florida. Zenith, an affiliate of ECMC Group Inc., last December entered into a deal with Corinthian Colleges to take over 56 Everest and WyoTech campuses in 17 states across the country, including Colorado. Earlier this month,...

A reader recently asked us to check a claim that’s been widely repeated on conservative websites -- that 90 million Americans either aren’t working or aren’t looking for work. Over the past few months, the statistic has been cited by various conservative bloggers, pundits and news outlets. We thought we’d take a closer look. Here’s how the calculation is made, using Census Bureau population estimates and employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: The total U.S. population age 16 and over is at least 243 million. Subtracting the nearly 156 million Americans in the labor force in June...

The evidence continues to mount..."Most since Lehman" has become the new meme for macro-economic data in the US as day after day brings another lacklustre superlative to be dismissed with some excuse by the cognoscenti of sell-side economists...  Of course, that is aside from anything related to aggregate jobs that is spewed by the government's official ministries of truth... (do not look at this chart)*  *  *So here are seven charts that scream "recession" is here...Retail Sales are weak - extremely weak. Retail Sales have not dropped this much YoY outside of a recession... And if Retail Sales are weak, then...

Three Palestinian Arab towns in western Samaria that are surrounded by Jewish communities and seemingly “cut off” from the rest of the the Palestinian Authority (PA) are actually doing quite well for themselves, according to a report by the PA-based Safa news agency cited by blogger Elder of Ziyon. The towns—Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya—are bordered by Elkana on the west and Barkan on the east, and as the blogger notes, they form “islands of Arab brown among a sea of Jewish blue areas,” in a map provided by the pro-Palestinian B’tselem. While PA propaganda portrays Jewish settlements as...

"From 1947 when [the] Bretton Woods System really got operating to 1971, when the dollar was convertible into gold at a 35th of an ounce, unemployment in America averaged 4.7 percent. And then we got rid of the Bretton Woods system — we defaulted on it — we went to fiat money, and in the years from 1971 to today, unemployment has averaged significantly above 6 percent. Low unemployment: gold standard. High unemployment: fiat money. But it’s not just unemployment. The bankruptcy rate which Elizabeth Warren likes to focus on was one point something per thousand for years, and suddenly...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. Patriot Coal Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday for the second time in three years. The company made the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It had emerged from an earlier bankruptcy case in December 2013 in Missouri. Patriot said it is involved in active negotiations for the sale of its operating assets to a strategic partner. Patriot said it will continue shipping and mining operations and it has received a commitment for $100 million in debt financing from secured debt holders that it did not identify.