Free Republic

Have you seen the latest economic indicators? I mean the ones not manipulated by the Obama administration or the mainstream media. Wall Street may be flying high, but on Main Street it looks more like Detroit every day. If you think Obama has solutions to turn it around, I've got a bridge to sell you...in Detroit. The biggest city to ever go bankrupt, Detroit, has been run by Democrats since 1962. That's over half a century of 100% Democrat rule, using the exact same policies as Obama. The city is now in ruins. Detroit leads the nation in illiteracy, welfare,...

Source: Thinkstock As the nation continues to recover from the recession, not only is the unemployment rate down, but the underemployment rate — an important measure of the health of the job market — has been slowly declining as well.In 2012, 14.7% of all people in the workforce either had no job, were too discouraged to go looking, or were not working as much as they wanted. Through the 12 months ending mid-2013, this figure had fallen slightly to 14.3%. But in many states, underemployment remains persistently high. These are the states where it is hardest to find full-time work.Click...

Americans are keeping their cars and trucks longer than ever, and even with new car sales increasing, the average age will continue to rise, an industry research firm says. The average age of the 247 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads hit a record of 11.4 years in January, the latest figures available from state registration data gathered by the Polk research firm. That's up from 11.2 years in 2012, and nearly two full years older than in 2007, before the start of the Great Recession, Polk said Tuesday....

The June JOLTS report, the job openings measure, was expected to print at 3,895,000. It printed at 3,936,000 after a revised print in May of 3,907,000. We are back to the recession job openings level of 2008, but going up instead of down. jolts0806213 That is the highest level in 5 years! Now for the bad news. Bill Gross at PIMCO thinks that the JOLTS print does not equate to 200,000 jobs. More like 125,000. grossjobstweet From Zero Hedge, we get this charming chart. JOLTS June 3 If we look at The House Ways and Means study on job creation...

A White House spokesman called July’s 7.4 percent unemployment rate proof that “the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.” He said it with a straight face. The data tell another story: America remains mired in the Great Obama Depression. The unemployment rate that the administration trumpets is a liar’s number. The formula for the unemployment figure that is released every month is rigged to look favorable to the administration in power. The true numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a far different picture. They show an America that is in...

A (New) Lost Generation: As the media focus on a slight drop in unemployment, an ugly trend gets ignored: the declining participation of young Americans in the job market. We'll pay for this for decades to come. We keep hearing the job market is "improving" or even "solid," with 162,000 new positions created in July and unemployment falling to 7.4%, the lowest since 2008. But one group is sitting it out. And it's the one that most enthusiastically embraced Barack Obama in both of his presidential elections: America's young. Their unemployment rate is a shocking 16.1%. Increasingly, those ages 18...

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009. A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their...

During his one-hour, six-minute snoozer of a speech supposedly about the economy in Galesburg, Illinois, on Wednesday, President Barack Obama denounced Washington’s “endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals.” “Phony”? The rest of the president’s speech was so utterly devoid of new ideas that even ordinarily reliable apparatchik Chuck Todd at MSNBC couldn’t handle it, aptly observing of Obama and his administration: “They have nothing new to say.” Obama, whose flunkies presented his speech as yet another “pivot” back to jobs and the economy, didn’t even identify employment growth as his top priority. Instead, he said that...

President Obama did his best to shift his administration's focus to the economy today during a speech at Illinois' Knox College by blaming the anemic economy on Republicans and "phony scandals."  As predicted, Obama gave America the same speech he's been giving for five years, saying the country needs more infrastructure spending due to crumbling roads and bridges, that we must fight poverty, that CEOs are making too much money while the poor suffer etc. He even went so far as to tout "saving the auto industry" one week after Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  "Today, five years after the start...

House Speaker John Boehner took a preemptive swing at President Barack Obama’s economic speech on Wednesday, jabbing the address as “a hollow shell” and “an Easter Egg with no candy in it.” In a brief speech on the House floor Boehner – like many other fellow Hill Republicans – attempted to get out front of Obama’s highly anticipated remarks at Knox College in Illinois. “The president himself said [the speech] isn’t going to change any minds,” Boehner said. “All right, well. So exactly what will change? What’s the point? What’s it going to accomplish? You probably got the answer: Nothing.”

United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) cut its full-year earnings forecast and said second-quarter profit was below expectations, citing a slowing U.S. economy. The stock dropped 4.3 percent in early trading.

While listening to President Obama’s speech this past week on yet more climate change regulations, I recalled Yogi Berra”s classic remark, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Who else but this president could conclude that even more EPA regulations will do anything but harm economic growth? Rather than work with Congress to find bipartisan compromise on the critical issues, the president prefers to shove another big-government, Washington centric program down our throats. Worse, the policies he is putting in place through new, onerous regulations will cause more harm than good to the average American. There is an increasingly ideological stubbornness...

The number of Americans applying for first-time unemployment benefits rose sharply last week to 360,000, an increase of 16,000 and much higher than the number analysts were expecting, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S expected, on average, claims for the seven days between June 30 and July 6 to fall to 340,000 below the previous week's revised figure of 344,000. By comparison, there were 363,000 first-time claims filed during the comparable week last year (seasonally adjusted). Although claims spiked, Labor Department officials and economists caution that one should not read too much into any...

The recession has been over for four years, but the birth rate in the U.S. continues to fall as many people struggle with a sluggish economy and financial uncertainty. According to a recent analysis by the Pew Institute, since 2007 when there were a record 4,316,233 births, the number of births has been steadily declining, with 4,007,000 births in 2012 - the lowest number since 1998. Analysts say that the birthrate is dictated by the economy.

Hiring is exploding in the one corner of the U.S. economy where few want to be hired: Temporary work. From Wal-Mart to General Motors to PepsiCo, companies are increasingly turning to temps and to a much larger universe of freelancers, contract workers and consultants. Combined, these workers number nearly 17 million people who have only tenuous ties to the companies that pay them—about 12 percent of everyone with a job. Hiring is always healthy for an economy. Yet the rise in temp and contract work shows that many employers aren't willing to hire for the long run. … Driving the...

Biden: 'President and I' Saved Economy by Breitbart News 30 Jun 2013, 9:50 AM PDT post a comment On Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden spoke at a major Virginia fundraiser, pushing himself as a possible 2016 presidential contender. “With virtually zero support from the Republicans, the president and I have moved the country from the worst recession since the Great Depression to 38 months of private-sector growth,” said Biden. Biden then launched an assault on Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general, whom he said was “at odds with the value set of Virginians.” He said that the...

The Floor Dropped Out From Under Gold Joe Weisenthal June 25, 2013 Gold is still looking like one of the sickliest assets in the world. The floor just dropped out of it tonight, sending it to a new low for this cycle.

The U.S. economy grew significantly less-than-expected in the first quarter of 2013, fuelling concerns over the U.S. economic outlook, official data showed on Wednesday. In a report, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said gross domestic product increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.8% in the three months to March, below expectations for a 2.4% gain.

AFTER throwing their caps into the air, fresh-faced college graduates will take their diplomas and head out into the real world this June. It’s a time of excitement, but also of anxiety. Despite national economic upturns, a university degree may be less consoling and more burdensome during this period of job uncertainty. A four-year degree from the University of Washington going forward bears an estimated $51,800 in-state price tag today. Over the past 10 years, the cost of public higher education has risen more than 104 percent, spawning a generation burdened by student-loan debt, according to The College Board. In...

Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday. Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all. --snip-- Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had...