Free Republic

It was less than two months ago that we brought you “The Mystery Of The ‘Missing Inflation’ Solved, And Why The US Housing Crisis Is About To Get Much Worse.” In it, we documented the inexorable rise of rents in America which, thanks to the housing crisis, has gone from being  a society of homeowners to a society of renters, wiping out two decades of “progress” on the homeownership rate in the short span of seven years. Of course to a certain extent (scratch that, to a “great” extent), the market sowed the seeds of its own destruction by creating...

The IT workers at Cengage Learning in the company's Mason, Ohio offices learned of their fates game-show style. First, they were told to gather in a large conference room. There were vague remarks from an IT executive about a "transition." Slides were shown that listed employee names, directing them to one of three rooms where they would be told specifically what was happening to them. Some employees were cold with worry. The biggest group, those getting pink slips, were told to remain in the large conference room. Workers directed to go through what we'll call Door No. 2, were offered...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Right here in the New York Times, even today. Paul Krugman -- who hates everything conservative, hates everything Republican, and despises personally Ronald Reagan -- has a piece called, "Despair, American Style." "A couple of weeks ago President Obama mocked Republicans who are 'down on America,' and reinforced his message by doing a pretty good Grumpy Cat impression. He had a point: With job growth at rates not seen since the 1990s, with the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance hitting record highs, the doom-and-gloom predictions of his political enemies look ever more at odds with...

A low of 3.8% could be reached on the jobless rate, one strategist says The current economic recovery has, by most measures, been slower and steadier than almost any that have come before. On the one hand, the expansion has lasted 77 months - the fifth-longest since 1900. On the other, it's taken longer than any recovery since World War II to reach the same growth in output, according to Minneapolis Fed data. But David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, says the current recovery actually does resemble the others in one respect - the speed at which...

A strong employment report for October hasn't solved a conundrum that has persisted for five years: As jobs are created and the jobless rate falls, the number of Americans in the labor force keeps dropping. The Labor Department reported Friday that, including revisions from August and September, hiring was up a brisk 283,000 - about double the meager pace of recent months. Gains were widespread in industries, including business services, health care, retail, food services and even construction, suggesting a housing bounce. Average wages rose 0.35% to $25.20, indicating many workers got raises. We'd love to see 12 months or...

After several months of weak and deteriorating payrolls prints, perhaps the biggest tell today's job number would surprise massively to the upside came yesterday from Goldman, which as we noted earlier, just yesterday hiked its forecast from 175K to 190K. And while as Brown Brothers said after the reported that it is "difficult to find the cloud in the silver lining" one clear cloud emerges when looking just a little deeper below the surface.That cloud emerges when looking at the age breakdown of the October job gains as released by the BLS' Household Survey. What it shows is that...

In another sign that the labor market slack, at least from the Fed's perspective, is now reaching a peak, the Household survey reported that while the civilian labor force rose by over 300K in October, the number of people not in the labor force actually declined by 97K to 94.5MM (as those employed rose by 320K), following an exodus from the labor force of over half a million in September. Despite this headline improvement, however, the participation rate remained at 62.4%, same as the prior month, and at a level last seen in 1977.  Elsewhere, the civilian employment to...

Andy KierszOctober 2, 2015 The September jobs report was broadly disappointing, with very few points of optimism. Along with non-farm payrolls and wage growth missing expectations, the civilian labor force participation rate — the percentage of the US population that is either working or looking for a job — fell by 0.2 percentage points to 62.4%. This is the lowest reading since October 1977.(snip)

The American economy added 271,000 jobs in October, a very strong showing that makes an interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve much more likely when policy makers meet next month. The report on hiring and unemployment, released Friday by the Labor Department, was eagerly anticipated on Wall Street, where traders and economists have been sifting each new bit of economic data for any augury of the central bank’s course. The unemployment rate dipped to 5.0 percent, from 5.1 in September. At this level, the unemployment rate is close to what would normally be considered the threshold for full employment by...

New U.S. applications for unemployment benefits last week recorded their largest increase in eight months, but remained at levels consistent with a fairly healthy labor market. Other data on Thursday showed a surprise gain in productivity in the third quarter after a drop in self-employment contributed to overall hours worked falling for the first time in six years, restraining labor-related production costs. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 276,000 for the week ended Oct. 31, the Labor Department said. It was the largest weekly increase since late February. ...

Wow, did you see the new jobs numbers? Unemployment is down to 5.1%. In the current definition of full employment (during the 1960’s it was a 4% unemployment rate) we are getting near that point. In fact, the unemployment rate is now lower than it was anytime during the Reagan presidency. We have had 67 consecutive months of job growth. The unemployment rate has dropped almost 5% from the high point of the Obama administration in October 2009. With all this good news why are things so bad? You may have heard something about a controversy regarding the unemployment numbers....

Friday, October 23, 2015 Akin: Illinois ranks high for creating lawsuits, not jobs By Travis Akin - The University of Illinois football team is struggling once again this year, mired at the bottom of the Big Ten and near the bottom of numerous national rankings. Similarly, the State of Illinois is stuck near the bottom of another set of rankings, only these rankings reflect not just lost games but lost jobs and thus are important to every person living in Illinois. These important but depressing rankings come from a new national study that confirms Illinois’ status as a lawsuit haven,...

There are currently 6.5 million more students in the U.S. with bachelor's degrees than there are jobs available that require such degrees, including jobs expected to be created by 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), but the Obama administration is still expanding programs to encourage even more foreign students to stay in the U.S. and work after graduation. There were 35,632,000 Americans age 25-64 with bachelor's degrees in 2014. If you include people age 20-24 and 65 years and older, the number grows to 45,176,000, according to the BLS statistics, reported The Washington Free Beacon....

One month ago, when the JOLTS data showed the highest number of job openings in history, rising by a near record 430,000 to 5.8 million vacant positions, most speculated that this data - considered to be Janet Yellen's favorite indicator of slack in the labor market now that the unemployment rate has become utterly unreliable due to the 94 million Americans out of the labor force - had sealed the fate of a September rate hike. It did not, as instead the Fed decided to shift to its 4th mandate (the 3rd being the stock market), namely the "global...

The yawning gap between job cuts (surging most since 2009) and initial jobless claims (hovering near 42 year lows) continues to grow as initial jobless claims collapse 7k this week to 255k - the lowest since 1973. Bear in mind, Goldman's explanation that jobless claims are useless in this part of the business cycle..."this does not signal a booming labor market." Charts: BloombergBut as Goldman Sachs confirms... "this does not represent a booming labor market"Although payroll employment growth has slowed in recent months, initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits remain very low. The four-week moving average of initial claims has...

Analysis: With $15 minimum wage campaign gaining political traction, group says workers need more for a living wage. As the nationwide campaign for a $15 hourly minimum wage gains traction, some labor groups have set their sights on an even higher number: $16.87 — a demand that could help push the $15 figure closer to the mainstream of American politics. A new report, published Tuesday, from the Alliance for a Just Society, a coalition of labor organizations, argues that $15 an hour is less than a living wage in most states. A single, childless adult earning $15 per hour would...

Government is again behind the curve in adapting to changes in the economy, ramping up hiring even as weakening global demand prompts private employers to tap the brakes. If the trend continues, governments could find themselves with more staff than they can afford — and eventually a new cycle of budget shortfalls and painful cutbacks. The slowdown in China and other economies has knocked the wind out of exports and commodity prices and slowed private-sector hiring to its weakest level in more than three years. But state and local governments are adding jobs at the fastest pace since the recession....

Job cuts have already surpassed  last year's total, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas with the highest annual total since 2009, when nearly 1.3 million layoffs were announced at the tail-end of the recession... so how does the government explain the fact that initial jobless claims have once again re-tumbled back to close to 42-year lows... Initial claims dropped 13k this week to 263k - just shy of the lowest levels sicne 1973... As Job cuts soar... One of these is lying...   The third quarter ended with a surge in job cuts, as U.S.-based employers announced plans to shed 58,877 in...

President Barack Obama’s deputies are quietly hacking a gap through immigration regulations to allow them to import hundreds of thousands of university-trained foreign workers for jobs sought by American college grads. “They’re bending immigration law until it almost breaks,” says Ian Smith, a lawyer at the Immigration Reform Law Institute. The Obama-hack, he added, should be fixed by Congress or a judge The regulatory hack is part of Obama’s broad immigration-boosting alliance with Fortune 500 Companies and the GOP’s establishment. In 2013 and 2014, most — but not all — of his prior amnesty and immigration plans were blocked by...

The federal government uses very carefully manipulated numbers to cover up the crushing economic depression that is going on in this nation. For the month of September, the federal government told us that 142,000 jobs were added to the economy. If that was actually true, that would barely be enough to keep up with population growth. Sadly, the truth is that the real numbers were actually far worse than that. The unadjusted numbers show that the U.S. economy actually lost 248,000 jobs in September and the government added more than a million Americans to the “not in the labor force”...