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New applications for unemployment insurance rose to 244,00 in the second week of April, the Department of Labor reported Thursday, up from an ultra-low 234,000 the week before. Investors had expected jobless claims to rebound to around 242,000 after falling to the second-lowest level since 1973 in the previous week. Thanks in part to new claims running low for so long, the total number of people receiving benefits of all durations fell to the lowest level in 17 years. Just 1.98 million people received benefits in the first week of April, according to Thursday's report, the lowest such number since...

The unemployment rate declined to 4.5 percent in March, and total nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 98,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Tuesday sent President Donald Trump a measure to expand the number of applicants for jobless benefits who can be drug-tested. The White House has said Trump will sign the measure into law as a cancellation of "unnecessary regulations." Lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Congress have complained that under President Barack Obama, the government placed too many limits on states for deciding which unemployment applicants can be drug-tested. The Labor Department's regulation meant that states could only test applicants for unemployment benefits who do jobs that require drug testing. The resolution passed by the House and...

It appears that the "animal spirits" unleashed by President Trump are not contained to the stock market: according to the BLS, one of the most notable observations to emerge from the February (and January) jobs reports is that the number of Americans no longer in the labor force plunged since December, declining by 736,000 in January (to a modest extent due to a data revision) and a further 176,000 in February to 94,190K. The combined two-month addition of 912,000 was the biggest drop in the "not in labor force" series on record. ... The 94,19 million people who are considered...

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell to near a 44-year low last week, pointing to further tightening of the labor market even as economic growth appears to have remained moderate in the first quarter.

Asylum seeker unemployment numbers are up 33 percent in Austria despite the fact that the number of total migrants coming into the country has declined. The number of unemployed asylum seekers has risen to 28,720 in Austria, and the capital Vienna is home to the vast majority of the unemployed migrants with two-thirds of asylum seekers in the city being without work. According to the Vienna employment Service (AMS), 67 percent registered with them to find work while many others were simply not available to work Kronen Zeitung reports.

As the Trump administration continues to figure out ways to put people back to work, they have to deal with a simple demographic fact: there are tens of millions of American men, in the prime years of their working lives, who have dropped out of the labor force. It’s not that these men are trying, and failing, to get jobs. They’ve simply given up. What is causing this problem and what can be done about it? Nicholas Eberstadt explores this issue in "Men Without Work: The Invisible Crisis." Eberstadt is a long-time fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and one...

<p>They’re looking for work, out of the labor force but unhappy about it, or report working part-time when they’d prefer more hours, according to data released last week. Their plight comes even as the U.S. flirts with what economists consider the maximum level of employment for the first time since before the recession, having added 15.8 million jobs since the start of 2010. While some of America’s jobless are simply between gigs, those persistently stuck out of work are called the structurally unemployed.</p>

U.S. employers stepped up hiring last month, adding a healthy 227,000 jobs, and more Americans began looking for work, a sign that President Donald Trump has inherited a robust job market. January's job growth was the best since September, and it exceeded last year's average monthly gain of 187,000, the Labor Department said Friday . The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.8 percent from 4.7 percent in December. But the rate rose for an encouraging reason: More Americans started looking for work, though not all of them found jobs immediately. The proportion of adults who are either working...

While Trump has personally expressed skepticism about the validity of the payrolls report, and especially the seasonally adjusted Establishment Survey, one aspect of the jos report he has been especially focused on is the number of people who are out of the labor force for economic reasons or otherwise: this is the infamous 95 million number that he brings up every time the strength of the "Obama recovery" has been mentioned. Which is why we are confident Trump will be happy to learn that in January, while the US economy added some 227K jobs according to the Establishment Survey,...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been published a politically favorable picture of the economy for too long.

Philadelphia may be turning into the new San Francisco under Mayor Jim Kenny, complete with all of the bizarre laws we’re used to seeing crop up on the west coast. Just last night we were talking about his plans for certain bars in the “Gayborhood” and the sketchy legal grounds for those proposals. Now there’s another new initiative rolling out which is going to put the screws to every employer in the city. The City of Brotherly love will now bar employers from asking job applicants about their salary history during the hiring process. Despite a threat from cable...

WINCHENDON — At the elbow of the bar, where afternoon regulars with calloused hands gripped $3 longnecks, the consensus was clear in the Toy Town Pub: America needs President Trump’s business smarts. The country needs Trump’s tell-it-like-it-is bluster because politicians who told us what we wanted to hear got us into this mess. It needs Trump to build that wall along the Mexican border to protect Americans who can’t find jobs. Most of all, America needs Trump to restore prosperity to forgotten places like Toy Town, the nickname Winchendon acquired a century ago — before the toy industry left. That...

Obamacare has cost roughly 300,000 small business jobs due to higher health care costs, according to a new report. The American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute, released findings Wednesday that rising premiums and regulations under the Affordable Care Act have had “dire” consequences for the labor market. The report found the law has cost $19 billion in lost wages per year and forced 10,000 small businesses establishments to close their doors. The study covered employers with 20 to 99 employees. “Research from the American Action Forum (AAF) finds regulations from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are driving up health...

Research shows that unemployment and low socioeconomic status are linked with higher risk for addiction, compared to having a job and being in the middle class. Although the media has focused on heroin and prescription opioid misuse these days as being a “middle class” problem, the risk of addiction is more than three times higher for people making less than $20,000 compared to those who make over $50,000. These facts make President Trump’s promises to increase employment — perhaps through an infrastructure program — critical if he wants to deal with the opioid epidemic in the long run. Meaningful work...

Do you want to know why Americans really were angry enough to elect Trump as President?Well, here it is — from an academic report with the dull title “The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States 1995-2015,” which was researched and written by economics professors from Harvard and Princeton.Their conclusion: 94 percent of the job growth over the last 10 years occurred in “alternative work arrangements.”What’s an “alternative work arrangement?” Those are people who aren’t really attached to a particular company. They are freelancers, or temporary workers, or on-call workers and contractors.According to Professors Alan...

Among Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, Black workers had the highest unemployment rate in December, 7.8%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Asians had the lowest at 2.6%. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Whites comprise 77.1% of the population. Blacks make up 13.3%; Hispanics, 17.6%; and Asians, 5.6%. Asians make up the smallest percentage of the population (not counting American Indians or Pacific Islanders) and yet have the lowest unemployment in the nation. For Whites, 16 and older, the unemployment rate was 4.3%. For Hispanics, 16 and older, the unemployment rate was 5.9% in December.

"It's a combination. There's no question a lot of them are retirees," Boockvar said. "No one wants to say, 'I want to get fired and sit on my butt.' But when people do lose their jobs, they're not being incentivized enough to go back to work compared to the benefits they get by not being at work."

The number of Americans not participating in the labor force hit a record 95,102,000 in December 2016, according to the latest numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last month, the number exceeded 95 million for the first time, with 95,084,000 Americans not participating. The bureau counts those not in the labor force as people who do not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks. The labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the population that has a job or actively looked for one in the past month, increased from...

The US labor market continues to hum. US companies added 156,000 nonfarm payrolls in December, which was a bit lighter than the 175,000 expected. On the plus side, November’s payrolls number was revised up by 19,000 to 204,000. December marked the 75th straight month of job growth in the US. As expected, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7% from 4.6% in November. This came as the labor force participation rate climbed to 62.7% from 62.6% a month ago. Importantly, wages are heating up. Average hourly earnings grew 0.4% month-over-month, which was better than the 0.3% expected. It was also...