Free Republic

Reading the mainstream media’s reaction to today’s payrolls report, one would be left with the impression that it was generally on the goldilocks side and indicative of a possible soft-landing – consider this from Bloomberg: “the US labor market stayed resilient last month while wage gains cooled, raising hopes that the economy may dodge a recession and the Federal Reserve will further slow its aggressive campaign of interest-rate hikes.”.. Which is accurate: wage growth indeed slowed down following a major revision to the data (remember that 0.6% M/M jump in average hourly earnings that freaked out the market last month?...

Key Points •Last Friday’s payroll report was generally cheered as having Goldilocks characteristics, but a closer look is warranted. •Wage growth was weaker-than-expected, with low wage industries in the spotlight; while manufacturing employment data is also troubling. •Layoffs are picking up, while consumers are worried about future job opportunities. The monthly payroll report is always closely scrutinized by economists and market watchers; perhaps even more so these days given the Federal Reserve’s decision to shift into neutral/pause mode earlier this year. After a dismal February, payroll growth rebounded in March; with nonfarm payrolls rising a higher-than-expected 196k, and slight upward...

Yes, this is the Obama economy. No matter how much Mr. "I'm the President" tries to deny it, he owns the economy in which we are living. The January jobs report was not a beacon of hope. In fact, it was really bad. The December jobs report was also in the tank. That makes two months in a row of very few jobs being created. Amazingly, the unemployment rate continues to tick down. We are being told it was because 115,000 unemployed workers found new jobs. What most of the media will not tell us is that 90,000 more unemployed...

Those in the creative field still have a chance to make a living doing what they love. According to a wage index released today by Payscale, media and publishing jobs experienced the largest annual growth in wages in the past year. This is a huge shift compared to the industry's "little to no growth" between 2008 and 2011. The Payscale Index reported that those in the media industry — which includes public relations jobs, entertainers and performers and media and communication workers — saw a wage increase of 4.6 percent between 2011 and 2012. This is higher than the 4.4...

A new set of figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show HIGHER-paying jobs growing faster. A FactCheck.org exclusive. (But there's evidence on both sides). Now that the economy is growing and creating new jobs, John Kerry has been saying that the quality of those jobs is "much lower" than the quality of jobs that have been lost. A recent ad by some Kerry allies even shows a middle-aged man reporting for his new job wearing a paper hat at a seedy-looking burger joint. Well, hold on -- there's strong new evidence to the contrary. A new set of numbers...