Free Republic

Finland has become the first country in Europe to pay its unemployed citizens a basic monthly income, amounting to €560 ($587), in a unique social experiment which is hoped to cut government red tape, reduce poverty and boost employment. Olli Kangas from the Finnish government agency KELA, which is responsible for the country’s social benefits, said Monday that the two-year trial with the 2,000 randomly-picked citizens who receive unemployment benefits kicked off Jan. 1. Those chosen will receive €560 every month, with no reporting requirements on how they spend it. The amount will be deducted from any benefits they already...

During Saturday’s Weekly Address, President Obama reflected on his time in office and touted the “extraordinary progress” the country has made over the last eight years. Transcript as Follows: “Happy New Year, everybody. At a time when we turn the page on one year and look ahead to the future, I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for everything you’ve done to make America stronger these past eight years. Just eight years ago, as I prepared to take office, our economy teetered on the brink of depression. Nearly 800,000 Americans were losing their jobs each month. In...

A California man has been charged with setting up fake businesses in three states, then using names taken from temporary visas issued to student visitors on a cultural exchange to obtain more than $355,000 in unemployment benefits for nonexistent workers, federal prosecutors in Iowa said in court documents. Nikolai Monastyrski is charged in federal court in Iowa with wire and mail fraud related to the scheme that prosecutors say he perpetrated there as well as in Illinois and Pennsylvania. A complaint filed Nov. 10 by Dana Johnson, a Chicago-based U.S. Department of Labor special agent, says Monastyrski was able to...

A university think tank just published a list of recommendations for paying for college. Perhaps not too surprisingly, they mostly involve increasing taxpayer-funded government subsidies of higher education. To its credit, the Miller Center at the University of Virginia acknowledges that the economy is worse than the U. S. government claims it is. "Total unemployed, people who want to work but are discouraged from looking, and people who are working part time because they cannot find a full-time job peaked in 2010 but remains at 9.8 percent," the executive summary of "Investing in the Future: Sharing Responsibility for Higher Education...

BARBARIC Islamic State (ISIS) fighters have continued to claim thousands of pounds in benefit handouts at the cost of the taxpayer, it has emerged. Denmark has discovered that 36 people who fled to join the terror cult have received handouts from the state that rack up to 672,000 kroner (£76,957). “If you travel to Syria to participate in war, to become an ISIS fighter, then you obviously do not have any right for benefits from the government.” At least 135 people have fled Denmark to join the sick terrorist regime. The country is thought to be the second European country...

U.S. jobless claims jumped to the highest level since mid-June, the government said Thursday. The Labor Department said jobless claims in the week ending Dec. 17 rose a seasonally adjusted 21,000 to 275,000. Economists polled by MarketWatch expected claims of 258,000. The four-week average of claims, a less volatile indicator, rose by 6,000 to 263,750. ... The ratio of continuing claims to the total number of unemployed was 27% in November, compared to a low of 34% during the previous expansion. That’s an indication of fewer people eligible for unemployment insurance — perhaps, due to the rise of the so-called...

The United States has heard talk of higher minimum wages for as long as I can remember. The federal minimum wage was last raised on July 24, 2009, when it went from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour. Candidate Bernie Sanders made increasing the minimum wage a major theme of his campaign. He wanted to raise the required wage to $15 and started calling it a “living wage.” But what he failed to mention is something that, ironically, he finally pointed out a few days before the 2016 Election Day. Sanders told a crowd that the Obama administration might be touting...

We keep reading in the media that the job market is on fire, that we´re near full employment. But it´s a sad truth that the monthly jobs report doesn´t really reflect what´s going on in our hobbled economy. As everyone knows by now, the jobs data for November show a decline from 4.9% to a 4.6% unemployment rate, as businesses created 178,000 new payroll jobs. What could be better? While we applaud these improvements, they mask deeper problems with the U.S. job market.

On Wednesday the BLS reported Janet Yellen's favorite labor market indicator, the JOLTS survey, which as expected (since it tracked the modestly weaker October payrolls) showed that in October, the number of job opening dropped from the upward revised September print 5.631 million to 5.534 million, down some 97,000, if modestly better than the 5.5 million expected.  The number of job openings declined to a series low in July 2009, one month after the official end of the most recent recession. Employment continued to decline after the end of the recession, reaching a low point in February 2010.The October...

Forget all the claims of "low" unemployment rate. This is the actual workforce participation rate from the last two Bush years on thru the Obama years from the BLS. It isn't pretty.

While the unemployment rate dropped and the economy added another 178,000 jobs, the number of Americans out of the labor force hit a record high last month. According to the Labor Department, 95,055,000 Americans were out of workforce in November, meaning they were neither employed nor had made an effort to find work over the previous month. The level of Americans outside of the workforce last month — due to retirement, education, discouragement, or otherwise — represented a substantial 446,000 increase over the month of October.

In a stunning development, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just revealed that the US unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 4.6% in November. This is the lowest level since August 2007. Economists were expecting the rate to be unchanged from October’s 4.9%. “The trend in employment growth remains more than strong enough to keep the unemployment rate trending down,” Jim O’Sullivan, of High Frequency Economics, said. Some of this decline was due to the 446,000 Americans that dropped out of the labor force, which brought the labor force participation rate down to 62.7% during the month from 62.8% a month ago....

The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent from 4.9 percent the previous month, according to new government data released Friday morning. The first employment report after a contentious presidential election in which the candidates expressed diverging views of the health and direction of the economy showed a job market that is continuing to steadily strengthen from the recession. “Overall, it’s a labor market that is continuing to improve, that has a decent momentum,” said Josh Feinman, chief global economist at Deutsche Asset Management. “So that’s certainly encouraging.” Economists surveyed by Bloomberg...

There’s a stereotypical view of job opportunities for older workers, and it’s not pretty. It goes something like this. If you’re past 50 and thinking of a career switch, forget it. The opportunities for older workers in the new economy are pretty much nonexistent. And you’re in even worse shape if you’re in your 50s or 60s and retired but want to get back into the workforce in a job that is both challenging and financially rewarding. The only spots available are low-skilled and low-paying—whether that’s burger flipper, Wal-Mart greeter or Uber driver. Boy, have a lot of people have...

Britain’s unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to its lowest level in 11 years in the first three months after the Brexit vote, official data showed on Wednesday, but there were signs that a slowdown in the labor market could be coming. The jobless rate edged down to 4.8 percent in the July-September period, compared with a median forecast of 4.9 percent in a Reuters poll of economists. But the increase of 49,000 in the number of people in work was the slowest since the three months to March, and the number of people claiming unemployment benefits gathered speed in October, the...

The soon-to-be White House chief strategist laid out a global vision in a rare 2014 talk, one where he said racism in the far right gets “washed out” and called Vladimir Putin a kleptocrat. BuzzFeed News publishes the complete transcript for the first time.

Everyone knows the economy isn’t as strong as it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago, but the data released about the labor market every month have indicated slow but steady progress in putting every American who wants a job back to work.

An interesting look at the cycle of recession and job growth within the United States. (It's scary when 2008 hits.) Animated Map of Unemployment in America From 1990 - 2016

The "quiet catastrophe" is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14%. If the labor force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs. The work rate for adult men...

More Americans sought unemployment benefits last week but the number of applications remained low, the latest sign that layoffs are scarce. […] The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications for jobless aid rose 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 254,000. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, ticked down to 256,000, matching a 43-year low first reached in April. […] The economy is expanding, though at a sluggish pace, growing just 1.4 percent in the April-June quarter, according to a separate government report Thursday. …