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The U.S. jobs machine kept humming along in April, adding a robust 263,000 new hires while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest in a generation, according to a Labor Department report Friday. Nonfarm payroll growth easily beat Wall Street expectations of 190,000 and a 3.8% jobless rate. Average hourly earnings growth held at 3.2% over the past year, a notch below Dow Jones estimates of 3.3%. The monthly gain was 0.2%, below the expected 0.3% increase, bringing the average to $27.77. The average work week also dropped 0.1 hours to 34.4 hours. Unemployment was last this low in...

Wouldn’t it be horrible if the number of Americans without a job was higher today than it was during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009? Well, that is actually true. As you will see below, nearly 102 million Americans do not have a job right now, and at no point during the last recession did that number ever surpass the 100 million mark. Of course the U.S. population has grown a bit over the last decade, but as you will see below, the percentage of the population that is engaged in the labor force is only slightly above the...

This past week, filings for unemployment benefits fell to a level not seen since December of 1969. While most reasonable individuals would consider this an encouraging development, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) begged to differ. “Unemployment benefits have always been a key weapon against economic recession,” she contended. “Putting money in the hands of those who have lost their jobs is the best stimulant for the economy in times of trouble. In this respect, I find the decline in filings to be extremely frightening.” “The euphoria now being experienced by Trump and the Republicans overlooks the danger of relying...

Filings for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell, dropping to the lowest since December 1969, as the labor market tightened further. Jobless claims decreased to 202,000 in the week ended March 30, below all economist forecasts, Labor Department figures showed Thursday. The four-week average, a less-volatile measure, declined to 213,500, the lowest since October. The surprising drop in claims is an indication that the labor market continued to tighten, with employers holding onto workers and loathe to let them go. The level of continuing claims, which had moved up in recent months, fell the most since November in the week ended...

Need some advice.... Background: starting in September 2018, I was working at a multinational pharma company in central New Jersey. It was a well-paid contract position through a staffing agency. I had learned quickly, was doing good work, and had already contributed substantive improvements to streamline their review process. On Friday (3/15), I was off on a (pre-approved) vacation day. After the close of business hours, I received a phone message and an email from my agency -- telling me that my contract had been terminated. I asked why and was told that they didn't know the reason, only that...

U.S. employers listed almost 7.6 million job openings in January, near the record high of 7.63 million in November, a sign that businesses are eager to hire more workers. The Labor Department also said Friday that the number of people quitting their jobs is up, another sign of a healthy economy, because it indicates people are leaving their jobs for ones that typically pay better, ...... Last spring, job openings began to outpace the number of unemployed for the first time in the 18 years the data has been tracked......The strong job market is having positive effects across the economy....

With the press largely focused on the college cheating scandal and cooking up new ways to Blame Trump for the mosque massacre in New Zealand, some real news is going largely unnoticed: "US Job Opening[s] Soar To All Time High: 1.3 Million More Than Unemployed Workers." According to Zerohedge's Tyler Durden: After a modest slowdown in job openings which started in September and continued through November, today's JOLTS report — Janet Yellen's favorite labor market indicator — for the month of January showed an unprecedented surge in job openings across most categories at the start of 2019, with the total number soaring from an...

The Labor Department released its monthly hiring and unemployment figures for February on Friday morning, providing one of the better snapshots of the state of the American economy. â–  20,000 jobs were added last month. Analysts had expected a gain of about 175,000, according to MarketWatch. It was the 101st straight month of job gains, but the weakest report since September 2017. â–  The unemployment rate was 3.8 percent. It was 4 percent in January. â–  Average hourly earnings rose by 0.4 percent after growing by 0.1 percent in January. The year-over-year gain is now 3.4 percent. Putting the weakness...

Right before Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, President Trump proclaimed: “It’ll be fantastic for the middle-income people and for jobs, most of all ... I think we could go to 4%, 5% or even 6% [GDP growth], ultimately. We are back. We are really going to start to rock.” A year later, it’s very clear that the tax cuts boosted gross domestic product and jobs a bit — and just for one year. Its effects are fading as U.S. GDP growth appears likely to weaken in 2019. The only thing that “rocked” were corporate...

The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits fell to more than a 49-year low last week, but the drop likely overstates the health of the labor market as claims for several states including California were estimated. Still, labor market conditions remain strong, which for now should help to temper fears of a sharp slowdown in economic growth. The economy is facing several headwinds, including a month-long partial shutdown of the federal government, which is starting to hurt both consumer and business confidence. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 199,000 for the week...

This is an EXCERPT.SECURITYANALYSIS Fact-Checking 5 of Trump’s Claims in Border Speech ...1. “All Americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration. It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages. Among those hardest hit are African-Americans and Hispanic Americans.” According to U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow, black Americans are disproportionately affected by illegal immigration. “Black males are more likely to experience competition from illegal immigrants,” Kirsanow said in a 2017 interview with The Daily Signal. “What happens is you eliminate the rungs on the ladder because a sizable number of black men don’t have access to entry-level jobs,”...

House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) has announced that the forthcoming budget blueprint will call for a 33 percent corporate income tax rate by hiking the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. This would make the U.S. a less competitive place to do business and make the U.S. statutory rate higher than many developed competitors. State corporate taxes average 6 percent across the U.S, so this planned tax hike would give the U.S. an average top corporate rate of 34 percent. The current combined corporate rate across the 36 member Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) is currently...

President Donald Trump has an opportunity to do what Congress should be doing, but isn’t: Help Americans who are on food stamps transition to work.The farm bill—which reauthorizes the foods stamp program for five years—would have been a prime opportunity for Congress to enhance work requirements. Under current law, certain work-capable adults must work 20 or more hours per week, participate in a supervised job search or training, or volunteer in their communities in order to receive food stamps.Most food stamp recipients are exempt from these requirements. These include people over 50 years old, the disabled, and minor children and...

A lot of people want to quit their jobs at Verizon, and that's a really good sign for the economy. In a drive to cut costs and shift investments as it rolls out 5G service, the company announced on Monday that 10,400 management employees had accepted voluntary buyout deals, out of 44,000 who were eligible. That might have been partially due to the fact that the terms of severance were generous, at three weeks of pay for each year of service, capped at 60 weeks. But it's likely there's a larger factor at play: The unemployment rate is now 3.7%,...

There were 1 million more jobs than unemployed workers in the most recent government count of job openings, according to a Labor Department release Monday. Total available jobs stood at 7.08 million for October, the second-highest level surpassed only by the 7.3 million in August, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed. By comparison, there were just 6.08 million Americans classified as unemployed for the month. The survey shows a tightening jobs market at a time when questions are arising over the broader economy's strength. Most economists are expecting a global slowdown that could infect the U.S., which is...

* The number of Americans filing applications for jobless benefits increased to a six-month high last week. * The data could raise concerns that the labor market may be slowing. * Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to 234,000 for the week ended Nov. 24. * It was the highest level of claims since the mid-May, the Labor Department said. The number of Americans filing applications for jobless benefits increased to a six-month high last week, which could raise concerns that the labor market could be slowing. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to a seasonally...

The Labor Department released its hiring and unemployment figures for October on Friday morning, providing the latest snapshot of the American economy.

The US stock market continues to set new records. Unemployment continues to go down. The United States is now at or near “full employment”. According to a Bloomberg headline last year, “The Jobless Numbers Aren’t Just Good, They’re Great”. But a closer look at economic data by demographer Nicholas Eberstadt reveals something else entirely. While “unemployment” has gone down, the work participation rate, and especially the male work rate, has been relentlessly declining for most of the post-War era and is now reaching a crisis with Depression-era levels. In his new book, Men Without Work, Eberstadt describes this as a...

Since Donald Trump won the presidency, he has presided over both one the most tumultuous political times in recent memory, as well as the best economy the country has seen since well before the financial crisis. Consumer and small business confidence is up — but so are both the national debt and budget deficit. The chart below, using mostly data compiled by Goldman Sachs, quantifies just how much things changed from the days just before the election in November 2016 through September 2018. Of course, the stock market has weakened in October, which has been its historically most volatile month....

Just posting this because you won't see it on Television, because it's actual news, and television doesn't report on real news. ashington (CNN Business)The last time the American job market was this strong, astronauts were still going to the moon. The unemployment rate fell to 3.7% in September, the lowest level since December 1969