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Right now, we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is "down" to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market. None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department...

MOULTRIE, Georgia - "All you black American people, *uck you all ... just go to the office and pick up your check," the supervisor at Hamilton Growers told workers during a mass layoff in June 2009. The following season, according to a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 80 workers, many of them black, were simply told: "All you Americans are fired." Year after year, Hamilton Growers, which has supplied squash, cucumbers, and other produce to Wal-Mart and the Green Giant brand, hired scores of Americans, only to cast off many of them within weeks, according to...

Barack Obama is preparing for his final State of the Union Address, which he'll deliver January 12. And the president is not looking to slow down as the end of his presidency nears. "I've got 12 months left to squeeze every ounce of change I can while I'm still in office. And that's what I intend to do," Obama writes in an email to supporters. We've done a lot of remarkable things together this year, and it's because of committed citizens like you that this country keeps moving forward. You keep proving the cynics wrong. On January 12, I'll be...

A surprisingly large share of Americans are in a precarious financial state, according to a new, detailed study from The Pew Charitable Trust. For its study, Pew sampled nearly 8,000 individuals, and it found that the typical American household’s finances have not recovered in any substantial way since the downturn, especially in regards to income, savings and covering emergency expenses. Pew’s conclusions have strong implications for the future of housing, so we have spotlighted several of the study’s most notable findings: 1. Income Instability – For the typical U.S. family, earnings have grown just 2 percent from 1999 to 2009, and more than half of U.S....

The fear in both the GOP and Democratic party is visible at the surface when it comes to Trump, and it's not that he's any of what they've accused him of. No, it's really much simpler than that, and both Republican and Democrat parties, along with the mainstream media, are utterly terrified that you, the average American, is going to figure out what underlies all of these institutions in America. No, it's not that they're evil. It's worse, for evil frequently is recognized and fought back yet for decades America has not awakened to what has been going on in...

Twenty-five years ago, President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Immigration Act of 1990. Instead of reforming the corrosive effects of the Immigration Act of 1965, an act that birthed the mass immigration system we have today, the 1990 act made the situation dramatically worse and make it less likely Americans would fill American jobs.The act raised the annual immigration ceiling from 530,000 to 700,000 (excluding other types of legal entry like refugee admissions) while creating a coterie of new immigrant and guestworker visas, mostly for semi-skilled and unskilled workers.Perhaps the most controversial creation of the 1990 act...

The H-2 guest worker program, which brought in 150,000 legal foreign workers last year, isn't supposed to deprive any American of a job. But many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to deny jobs to U.S. workers so they can hire foreigners instead. A BuzzFeed News investigation. _______________________________________ MOULTRIE, Georgia -- "All you black American people, f___ you all ... just go to the office and pick up your check," the supervisor at Hamilton Growers told workers during a mass layoff in June 2009. The following season, according to a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 80 workers,...

It is important to remember that our country was founded on self-employment. Most historians estimate that over 80 percent of adult males in the U.S. were self-employed for the first 50 or more years before and after winning independence. These workers would be excluded from the current labor market definition. This makes no sense at all. As our country changes, so should our concept of how to measure employment. Today's younger generations want self-employment or fulfillment and high flexibility and from their employer. In many ways they are returning to the spirit of our Founders. They want to be independent...

Here is one of the reasons why the Fed is confident the US economy is strong and resilient enough to sustain a rate hike: since January, the US has added 293,900 waiter & bartender positions and zero manufacturing workers.Unless one is an economist, no further commentary is needed. If one is an economist, we eagerly look forward to an extended discussion why one should focus only on the blue line and ignore the red one, debate the adverse impacts of the weather (both hot and cold) on manufacturing, listen to how the collapse of high-paying jobs is actually a...

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 211,000 in November, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in construction, professional and technical services, and health care. Mining and information lost jobs. Household Survey Data In November, the unemployment rate held at 5.0%, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.9 million, was essentially unchanged.During the past 12 months, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons are down by 0.8 percentage point and 1.1 million, respectively. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.7%),...

The Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 200,000 jobs in November. That's in line with the average so far this year - 206,000 - but below the 2014 monthly pace of 260,000. The unemployment rate is down to 5.0 percent from the recession high of 10 percent, largely because fewer adults are looking for work. Since the recovery began, GDP growth has averaged 2.1 percent and the economy has added 12.6 million jobs. Growth should pick up to 2.5 to 3 percent next year, but here are five reasons why jobs creation will still disappoint. 1....

GOP upstart shocks with outreach to blacks, the real reason for MSM vitriol Donald Trump's outreach effort to black leaders this week was portrayed as a botched and bungled meeting, a circus in which the mouthy billionaire declared that the 100-plus pastors in attendance would be endorsing his bid to grab the GOP presidential nomination, only to have the men of God themselves say, not so fast, Donny T. The cables and the networks and the newspapers mocked the meet-and-greet, even before it happened. And here's why: Trump had shocked again. This non-candidate who has no business running for president...

Donald Trump is insisting that "most" of the 100 black pastors he met with on Monday are endorsing him for president. "I thought it was an amazing meeting. I met some fantastic people," Trump said following the private meeting at Trump Tower. The GOP presidential front-runner had canceled a planned press conference on Sunday where he was to have highlighted the endorsements of 100 black religious leaders. He did so after several of the pastors denied they were endorsing Trump for president. Darrell Scott, a pastor at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, stood by Trump's side...

There is nothing more volatile to societal stability than millions of unemployed men, growing angry and resentful towards the ruling class for their lot in life. A simmering rage is bubbling below the surface as 20% of American households rely on food stamps to survive, the percentage of Americans in the labor force stands at a four decade low... The rise of Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the early polls for Republican presidential candidate is being fueled by a rising anger and discontent with the corporate media promoting offensive social agendas, the flaunting of the Constitution by a president...

Looking back at the unrest that followed Freddie Gray's death, Baltimore voters see events differently than do voters statewide, a new poll shows.City voters are less likely to sympathize with police, and they are more likely to see joblessness and racism as a cause of April's unrest, according to a poll of likely voters conducted for The Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore.Those living outside the city are more likely to blame "a lack of personal responsibility among residents" for the city's ills.The divided opinions were most pronounced when respondents were asked for their opinions of how Baltimore State's...

Respondents were given a list of 88 things that could inspire fear. These entries ranged from world problems (like war, terrorism, nuclear attacks) to practical fears (murder, death, unemployment) to uncommon phobias (zombies, clowns, ghosts). ... Also on the list was global warming, which leading Democratic candidates have said is the biggest threat facing Americans today. But the American Fears survey revealed a much different opinion on the topic, with only 30.7% of respondents saying that global warming made them either afraid or very afraid. Global warming did not even make the top twenty. Here are some things Americans are...

Americans are losing faith in the jobs market. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index for November, released on Tuesday, unexpectedly fell to 90.4, a 14-month low. Economists had estimated that the index rose to 99.5 in November, from an upwardly revised 99.1 print (from 97.6) in October. The Conference Board's Lynn Franco explained in the report: "The decline was mainly due to a less favorable view of the job market. Consumers' appraisal of current business conditions, on the other hand, was mixed. Fewer consumers said conditions had improved, while the proportion saying conditions had deteriorated also declined. Heading into 2016,...

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its monthly estimates of unemployment rates in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, and things are looking pretty good. The bureau noted that unemployment rates fell in 32 states and Washington, DC, went up in just three states, and stayed the same as September in 15 states. Unemployment in every state and DC was below 7%, indicating increasingly healthy labor markets across the nation. The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi's chief financial economist, Chris Rupkey, circulated an email after the report with the title "Jobs market is literally on fire in...

Employment rates among prime-age workers, especially men, have declined sharply over the last few decades. The Great Recession made matters worse. Recent declines in the unemployment rate have enticed some back into the active labor force but the long-term picture is still discouraging. When we compare the U.S. to other advanced countries, working-age adults are simply not working as much as adults in most European nations. What's going on here? As my colleague Gary Burtless notes, three developments have probably played a role. First, real wages have fallen by 28 percent for high-school educated men since 1980, making work much...

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...