Free Republic

Many of the coronavirus pandemic layoffs will become permanent job losses, according to a new study with alarming implications for the future of the economy.Forty-two percent of workers experiencing recent layoffs will suffer permanent job losses, according to a paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.The finding is especially grim news because officials are hoping that most of the workers sent home during the pandemic will return quickly to their old jobs. The vast majority of the massive layoffs in response to the pandemic have been on a temporary basis: In April, 18 million of the 20.6 million people...

e-mail 1k shares 477 View comments Thousands of Uber employees learned that they were being laid off in a three-minute Zoom call last week. The ride-sharing company informed 3,500 people who worked in customer service and recruitment around the country that it would be their last day working for Uber on the live call. Uber's Ruffin Chaveleau was tasked with breaking the news that the app was 'eliminating' thousands of jobs on the call, obtained by DailyMail.com. Chaveleau heads Uber's Phoenix Center of Excellence - the term the company uses to describe its customer service office. Chevaleau told staff: 'Our...

Yesterday's employment report for April showed 20.5 million jobs lost and an unemployment rate of 14.7%. This is its worst since the Great Depression. It was at a 50-year low of 3.5% just two months ago. Awful, yes, but only half as bad as it looks for the economy. Why? Because roughly half of American workers can earn more from unemployment benefits than they earned at their jobs prior to the coronavirus shutdown, according to Eric Morath at the Wall Street Journal. On top of state unemployment, federal coronavirus stimulus is adding $600 per week. With my sister, I co-own...

The coronavirus lockdown could cause 77,000 deaths from suicides and drug overdoses – more than the virus itself, a leading doctor has claimed. New York physician Dr. Nicole Saphier told DailyMailTV that the drastic rise in unemployment due to the nationwide shutdown has caused a spike in overdose deaths and suicides in some communities which could end up outnumbering even the tens of thousands who have died from COVID-19. Dr. Saphier pointed to stark warnings from cities across the country showing rocketing overdose death rates, while a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that each 1%...

Souplantation, the popular buffet-style dining brand founded in San Diego 42 years ago, is closing all of its restaurants permanently, a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic that is likely to be the death knell for all self-serve eateries. The permanent closing of the 97 restaurants, including 44 in California, was announced Thursday after weeks of efforts to salvage San Diego-based Garden Fresh Restaurants, the parent company of Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes. The closing will mean lost jobs for 4,400 employees. “The FDA had previously put out recommendations that included discontinuing self-serve stations, like self-serve beverages in fast food, but they...

I just got a call for a decent job - everything looked really good. The recruiter's name was Alex Jones - funny, he had an Indian accent. I'm out of work and so my resume is posted on the standard sites... free to download by all and sundry. Additionally, this job is 100% remote. Sound too good to be true? Read on... It started with an email from 'Alex Jones', I replied. Then he called. Just another Indian recruiter scouring the USA for tech resources... nothing eye popping so far. They have taken to using fake Anglo sounding names lately...

The defense industry is one of few manufacturing sectors in North Texas not reeling from the impact of COVID-19. One of the area's largest employers, Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), hired 166 people in Dallas-Fort Worth during the past two weeks and is advertising for roughly 700 more open positions in the area, said company spokesperson Ken Ross. The company builds missile products and fighter jets locally. The additions are part of a broader push by Lockheed Martin to beef up its employee base around the country. The Bethesda, Maryland-based defense contractor said last week it has hired close to...

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has failed to address Illinois’ broken unemployment system, which has been unable to deliver benefits to people desperate for a lifeline. He has been incapable of cutting through the confusion facing small business owners, gig workers, independent contractors and sole proprietors about the status of their benefits. And on Sunday, after the nation’s top infectious disease expert said some sectors of the economy might be able to start reopening in May, Pritzker finally hinted that the state is thinking about — just thinking about — how to safely get key sectors back online, but that remains a...

It is vitally important, literally life and death, that the proper costs and benefits are weighed with the decision on how much and how long to shut down economic activity through the pandemic. As the coronavirus pandemic continues across the world, leaders and policymakers have scrambled to respond to the growing health crisis. In the United States, multiple state governors have issued statements urging their citizens to follow social distancing guidelines.Other governors have taken more extreme measures, issuing orders to effectively lock down entire state economies. The current goal of these responses has been to slow the spread of the...

The Department of Justice announced today that El Expreso Bus Company (El Expreso), based in Houston, Texas, has paid over $90,000 to eight U.S. workers pursuant to a May 29, 2019, settlement agreement.The settlement resolved the Department’s claims that El Expreso discriminated against U.S. workers due to a hiring preference for temporary visa workers, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). This settlement is part of the Department’s Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which targets, investigates, and brings enforcement actions against companies that discriminate against U.S. workers because they prefer to hire foreign visa workers. Since the Initiative’s inception,...

The biggest threat to a corrupt regime is when truth moves away from the "conspiracy theory" fringes and into the mainstream. Which is why we thank Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, for daring to tell the truth to those who care to listen.Posted first on LinkedInThe Big Lie: 5.6% UnemploymentHere’s something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street...

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) pushed back on Fox News’s Neil Cavuto’s citation of record low African American unemployment, saying African Americans “were fully employed during slavery.” The subject came up when Cavuto asked Clyburn, who has yet to make an endorsement ahead of the South Carolina primaries, if he would support the Democratic nominee if it was former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. "I'm going to back whoever our nominee is. Absolutely,” said Clyburn, the top African American Democrat in Congress. "Even with the things he has said about African Americans? Does that bother you?" Cavuto asked. Bloomberg...

The Pro’s and Con’s to Contracting Overseas Today, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women working overseas on various contracts and making good money, probably two to three times what they can make in the United States. Naturally, the best-paying jobs are in high-threat environments such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. Yes, these places can be dangerous. Since 2001 over 3,300 civilian contractors have been killed, and almost 95,000 were injured in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. The vast majority were third-country nationals, or TCNs, from places like Peru, Colombia, Philippines, Fiji, Uganda, Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and so on....

AB5, California’s new gig economy law, has left the state’s performing artist community in a state of fear and confusion. The law is intended to reduce worker misclassification, making it harder for companies to treat workers as independent contractors. It establishes a test to determine whether workers are employees who should receive minimum wage, paid sick days and other benefits. But the law’s ambiguous language — specifically the use of the phrase “fine artist” without actually defining the term — already had led arts organizations to postpone or cancel productions and has sent others scrambling to raise more money to...

Federal workforce too reliant on degrees, says White House President Trump's administration wants to reform federal hiring. It complains of burdensome hiring rules and of losing candidates because filling jobs takes too long. The system "frustrates hiring managers," it said in its 2021 budget proposal. The Trump administration's proposed FY 2021 budget, which it sent to Congress Monday, calls for "transforming" federal workforce hiring. It said federal rules are making it difficult to fill high-demand jobs, especially in technology. It called the hiring and dismissal rules "lengthy and byzantine" and said "stellar performance is inadequately recognized and poor performance insufficiently...

A tight U.S. labor market is drawing Americans off the sidelines at a record rate. Nearly three of four Americans who became newly employed in recent months came from outside the labor force—meaning they weren’t actively looking for work prior to the month they accepted a job. That is the highest ratio in three decades of records and helps explain how employers have consistently added jobs without stoking stronger wage growth. The unemployment rate, 3.6% in January according to the Labor Department, is trending near a 50-year low. That leaves employers with a shallow pool of candidates actively searching for...

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) monthly employment situation report confirms that the historically strong U.S. labor market has continued to expand into 2020.The report’s Establishment Survey finds that the economy added 225,000 jobs in January, crushing market expectations of 158,000 jobs. Including upward revisions to November and December, average monthly employment growth over the past year was a healthy 171,000 jobs. The sectors that saw the largest gains last month were education and health services (+72,000), construction (+44,000), and leisure and hospitality (+36,000).This month’s report included BLS’ annual revisions to the Establishment Survey. These revisions showed...

Key takeaways The unemployment rate is extremely low, which means people are switching jobs more frequently for opportunities that better fit their needs.Switching jobs in a strong economy can give you more negotiating power.Employers are hiring already-employed candidates at a higher rate than unemployed candidates.Job switchers often change industries, but not at a higher rate than usual.Job hopping doesn’t always look bad on your resume (and, in some instances, can even help increase your hireability). Have you been considering leaving your current employer for another opportunity? If so, you’re not alone. In recent years, the job switching rate has...

The Christian Post recently published my article "Financial Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice", which deals with the idea that God cares about the morality of the source of the money that we give back to Him as an offering, as taught in scriptures such as Deuteronomy 23:18, and the implications for investors regarding the profits we earn from our investment choices.In reply to this article, one reader posted a comment under the name "Christian Commenter" and expressed some thoughtful questions that I have found to be very commonplace among believers when first presented with the scriptural teaching around investment stewardship...

It doesn't seem all that long ago the media and liberal academia were predicting economic meltdown in the aftermath of Trump's election. Liberal "economist" Paul Krugman, for example, famously predicted after Trump's election, "So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened." Well, the left has been repeatedly proven wrong about Trump and the economy, and once again, it's pure joy to point out how wrong they were. With the latest unemployment statistics in,...