Free Republic

A number of months ago, when Republicans' collective 2018 fate was looking fairly bleak, I attended an off-the-record briefing that reviewed internal party polling, highlighting the party's strengths and weaknesses heading into a challenging midterms.  The political headwinds, as they're often referred to, were blowing against Team Red -- based both on historical precedent and measurable electoral outcomes.  Many of those same obstacles remain firmly in place today.  But two of the bright spots that the assembled GOP gurus underscored were (a) the growing strength of the US economy, thanks to tax reform and other policies, and (b) the polarizing unpopularity of...

Supply side economics works, and if one can keep the government out of the way, all boats will truly rise on the rising tide As much as I am eager to celebrate the American economy coming back into the land of the living, I am also cautious about getting into the Conga line until I can look at some of the internal numbers associated with those who are striving to achieve the American dream. What is not often discussed by the pinheads on TV is that the level of participation in the labor force is perhaps as important as the...

The New York Times headline reporting on the May jobs numbers that came out yesterday might go down in history: "We ran out of words to describe how good the jobs numbers are." The real question in analyzing the May jobs numbers released Friday is whether there are enough synonyms for "good" in an online thesaurus to describe them adequately. So, for example, "splendid" and "excellent" fit the bill. Those are the kinds of terms that are appropriate when the United States economy adds 223,000 jobs in a month, despite being nine years into an expansion, and when the unemployment rate falls...

The real question in analyzing the May jobs numbers released Friday is whether there are enough synonyms for “good” in an online thesaurus to describe them adequately. So, for example, “splendid” and “excellent” fit the bill. Those are the kinds of terms that are appropriate when the United States economy adds 223,000 jobs in a month, despite being nine years into an expansion, and when the unemployment rate falls to 3.8 percent, a new 18-year low. “Salubrious,” “salutary” and “healthy” work as words to describe the 0.3 percent rise in average hourly earnings, which are up 2.7 percent over the...

President Trump on Friday signed a series of executive orders making it easier to fire federal government workers and rolling back the prerogatives of unions that represent them. Andrew Bremberg, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the president was “fulfilling his promise to promote more efficient government by reforming our Civil Service rules.” But the push also reflects conservatives’ long-running suspicion of the federal bureaucracy, one that the president’s advisers have been outspoken in channeling. Shortly after Mr. Trump took office, Stephen K. Bannon, then his chief strategist, called for “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”...

Job openings hit a fresh record in March, further defying opinion that the labor market is tightening and near full. The level hit 6.6 million, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Tuesday that, even though lagging a month, is closely watched for signs of market slack. Job openings in total rose by 472,000 over February. Openings jumped in professional and business services, which added 112,000 positions, as well as construction, with 68,000 and transportation, warehousing and utilities, which reported 37,000 new positions. The openings happened during a month when nonfarm payroll hiring grew by 135,000, according...

You have to go all the way back to December 2000 to find the last time the unemployment rate was as low as April's 3.9%. But hold the standing ovation. The labor market isn't as bright, or as tight, as it might seem. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the economy added 164,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment level dropped to 3.9%. It was 4.8% when President Trump took office. Since Trump took office, the economy has added a total of 2.7 million jobs, and since his tax cuts took effect we've seen an average 200,000 new jobs...

President Trump is proud of the 3.9% unemployment rate, the lowest since 2000. But it’s not as great as it sounds. Employers added 164,000 jobs in April, which was lower than forecasts but still okay. Employers have created an average of 200,000 new jobs each month so far in 2018, which is a strong pace of job growth. But the unemployment rate, which fell from 4.1% to 3.9%, is a puzzlement. There were fewer people looking for jobs in April, which means fewer people counted as unemployed. When unemployment falls because people get jobs, that’s good. But when unemployment falls...

First-time claims for unemployment benefits fell to a 48-year low last week as the labor market shows further signs of tightening after years of steady growth. Claims plummeted to 209,000, a decrease of 24,000 in the week through April 21, from the previous week's 232,000, the lowest level since Dec. 6, 1969, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. The four-week moving average, a better gauge of the labor market's health, fell by 2,250 claims to 229,250. New York accounted for the bulk of the drop, with the number of claims in the state dropping 18,402. A tighter labor market is...

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits dropped to their lowest level in more than 48 years last week, suggesting that March's slowdown in job growth was probably temporary. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 209,000 for the week ended April 21, the lowest level since December 1969.

I heard a portion of Rush Limbaugh attacking Bernie Sanders' "solution" for jobs and heard Rush cite jobless stats as an indicator of "full employment."

Fourteen states have set new records for low unemployment rates in the last year, nearly a decade after the recession put millions of Americans out of work. The states hitting new unemployment lows run the ideological gamut, from conservative Texas to liberal California, suggesting a recovery stronger than any particular political persuasion. In March, eight states saw new record lows, including Hawaii (2.1 percent), Idaho (2.9 percent), Kentucky (4 percent ), Maine (2.7 percent), Mississippi (4.5 percent), Oregon (4.1 percent) and Wisconsin (2.9 percent). California also set a new record last month. The Golden State’s unemployment rate stands at 4.1...

Harvey. Illinois is in the midst of a financial crisis that represents the tip of the iceberg ... The city of 25,000 in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago is suffering from high unemployment (22%). An astonishing 32% of the population lives below the poverty level. This is a deadly mixture that has caused catastrophic shortfalls in revenue, leading to a crisis in funding pensions for the city's retired workers. Since state law prohibits municipal bankruptcy, Harvey has been forced into a situation Illinois has never seen. In February, the state began to garnish Harvey's revenue to fund its pension...

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits is running at the lowest level in 44 years, the Department of Labor reported Thursday. Altogether, 1.88 million people were receiving jobless benefits at the end of March. That was low enough to sent the monthly average for such claims down to 1.85 million, the lowest such mark since January of 1974, when the total workforce was much smaller. Unemployment benefits are available for up to 26 weeks in most states. During the worst of the recession, as many as 6.5 million workers were getting unemployment insurance. As for new claims for unemployment...

Technological progress has frequently resulted in changes in the nature of work, sometimes affecting skilled workers more and sometimes affecting unskilled workers more. But whichever categories of worker were affected, such changes have almost universally been to the benefit of workers of all skill levels. Let’s consider two or three professions of the past.Take the “tanner.” Before technology transformed the nature of such work, Wikipedia tells us that tanning “was considered a noxious or ‘odoriferous trade’ and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor… The ancient tanner might use his bare feet to knead the skins in dung...

Recent national economic reports point to a robust economic recovery. Employment is steadily increasing, and unemployment has fallen to a 17 year low. But obscured by the national averages are 52 million Americans still living in distressed communities, areas where poverty rates, unemployment, income, and business growth are far below the national averages. This economic recovery has been unusual with its geographic concentration. Research by the Economic Innovation Group shows that just 73 out of 3,000 counties produced more than half the job growth in the first five years after the recession. A mere five metro areas were responsible for...

* Private companies added 241,000 positions in March as employment in construction and manufacturing surged, according to ADP and Moody's Analytics. * The report was well ahead of Wall Street estimates for 205,000 growth and marked the fifth straight month that private payroll growth topped 200,000. * Service providers added 176,000 new jobs while goods-producing industries contributed 65,000. * "The job market is rip-roaring," says Mark Zandi, Moody's Analytics' chief economist. Companies kept up the hiring pace in March, adding 241,000 positions as employment in construction and manufacturing surged, according to a report Wednesday from ADP and Moody's Analytics. Economists...

Tax reform may not be generating the drumbeat of positive headlines that it once was, but the progress and successes it has created continue to pile up.  Walgreens has affirmed a $100 million investment in raising employees' wages thanks to the GOP-passed law, as McDonald's unveils new education benefits, also to the tune of nine figures, for its workers.  Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan is touting the decision of a smaller Maryland-based company that he visited last fall to offer tax reform bonuses of up to $1,000.  More than four million US workers have received such bonuses from their employers...

People living with disabilities, serious illness and the frailty of old age are bracing to lose caregivers due to changes in federal immigration policy. About 59,000 Haitians live in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian program that gave them permission to work and live here after the January 2010 earthquake devastated their country. Many work in health care, often in grueling, low-wage jobs as nursing assistants or home health aides. Now these workers’ days are numbered: The Trump administration decided to end TPS for Haitians. In Boston, the city with the third-highest Haitian population, the decision has...

The new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump have generated intense controversy. With the debate ongoing, it might be useful to examine how other countries have dealt with similar policy debates in the past. New Zealand now ranks third in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and is one of the champions of economic freedom around the world. But it wasn’t always so. In the mid-1980s, New Zealand was facing an economic crisis, with its domestic market and international trade both heavily regulated. Unemployment had reached 11 percent, and inflation was a sky-high 15 percent. In response, the government...