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Best Buy plans to lay off 1,800 store employees and 600 Geek Squad workers, according to a source at the company. The 2,400 cuts represent 1.4 percent of the company's 167,000 workforce and come on top of jobs associated with store closings the company announced previously.

While we have rescued our economy from catastrophe, we have also begun to build a new foundation for growth." Barack Obama from the White House, August 7, 2009 In 2008, Obama inspired legions of young Americans who bought into his "Change you can believe in" campaign message. According to the Pew Research Center, voters under the age of 30 supported Obama over John McCain 66:31 – by far the largest disparity between young voters and other age groups in any presidential election since exit polling began in 1972. In addition to the critical vote totals, Obama attracted thousands of high...

Recent headlines have pondered the apparent paradox of economic recovery without corresponding increases in jobs – called the “jobless recovery” by some. I believe I have resolved the apparent conundrum using a detailed analytical technique. Don’t blame your politicians because few of them are familiar with this methodology, and no liberal has ever heard of it. I like to call this special technique…common sense.

Men are disappearing from the workplace in ways that don't always register on the official unemployment rate The March jobs report released on Apr. 1 seemed like the best in years. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis released a statement noting that the four-month drop in the jobless rate, to 8.8 percent from 9.8 percent, was "its largest decline since 1984." Behind the headlines, though, statistics on jobs are far less encouraging. Yes, job growth has picked up somewhat. Yet an equally important reason for the lower jobless rate is that many people, men in particular, have simply given up looking...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, hit 10.3% in February -- up from 9.8% at the end of January. The U.S. unemployment rate is now essentially the same as the 10.4% at the end of February 2010.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy is starting to fire on almost every cylinder these days but the one that matters most: Job creation. Factories are busier. Incomes are rising. Autos are selling. The holiday shopping season is shaping up as the best in four years. Stock prices are surging. And many analysts are raising their forecasts for the economy's growth. Goldman Sachs, for instance, just revised its gloomy prediction of a 2 percent increase in gross domestic product in 2011 to 2.7 percent and forecast 3.6 percent growth for 2012. "The upward momentum has more traction this time," says James...

Labor ministers reporting to the G20 heads of state in Toronto will document a truly scary rise in unemployment worldwide—a mind-boggling record high of 212 million. In its annual Global Employment Trends report, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that 34 million people joined the ranks of the unemployed in 2008 and 2009. It would have been closer to 55 million if the largest economies hadn’t taken steps to offset the global collapse in financial markets with government stimulus, according to Ron Blackwell, chief economist of the AFL-CIO. Here in America, 15 million unemployed is the official number, but each...

The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling. When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- States again saw sharp declines in tax collections in the last quarter of 2009 -- a record fifth straight quarterly drop, according to a new report that predicts more looming spending cuts or tax increases. Overall, revenue from state tax collections dropped 4.1 percent for the quarter compared to the same quarter in 2008, the Rockefeller Institute of Government reported Tuesday. For some governors and lawmakers already grappling with painful budget decisions, the latest figures -- while offering more evidence of the grim economy -- weren't all that surprising. "It is topic number one," said Montana...

Taxes: On the eve of President Obama's first State of the Union address, two Democratic congressmen are advising him to extend the Bush tax cuts instead of letting them expire. Now that's a stimulus. We hear that the administration is considering taking a more populist tack as it sails the choppy political waters of 2010. Some of President Obama's plans reportedly include several tax tidbits for the "middle class," including a doubling of the child care tax credit for families below $85,000 in income, and $1.6 billion for child care and a cap on student loan payments. Such transparent populism...

TAMPA - Business owners in Florida are about to get hit with a big tax hike: starting January 1st, all Florida businesses will have to pay skyrocketing unemployment compensation taxes to replenish the unemployment compensation trust fund.

To whom it may concern; If I reduce my credit-card balance, American Express will cut my credit limit to a much lower “comfort limit.” If I don’t make a big payment, my card will be suspended. If I DO make the big, unexpected and unannounced payment on demand, my “comfort level” may be capriciously dropped anyway, leaving me both without operating capital and without a reserve. My “utilization rate” is a key factor in determining my credit scores, and the bank has crashed my credit rating. I am a small business owner and as a result of the usurious and...

Barack Obama rode an economic crisis into the White House in November 2008. Now he’ll have to ride out the last of that economic storm if he’s to keep his own job in three years. But with unemployment surging and the President’s poll ratings sinking, there’s growing debate about what—if anything—the President can do about the situation. cnbc.com President Obama announcing jobs summit on Thursday “There's nothing new here," says crisis management expert and former senate aide Larry L. Smith. “We have become a very impatient people. When things don’t turn around overnight, we get impatient.” The President took his...

WASHINGTON — Fewer people are claiming unemployment benefits — but still too many to signal that the economy is close to gaining jobs. First-time claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to a seasonally adjusted 502,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the fewest claims since the week ending Jan. 3, and below economists' estimates. Claims would have to fall to the high 400s to indicate the economy could soon produce even a slight gain in jobs, estimates Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. That level of claims could be reached by January, he said, and the economy should...

Given the recent announcement that the government's measure of unemployment has hit 10.2 percent, and given that the official House version of Obama's healthcare plan, HR 3962, has now passed, a close examination of the effects of "Obamacare" on the labor market is important. It will be no surprise to readers of this site to learn that the Democrats' bill will seriously harm precisely those poor and uninsured citizens it is ostensibly designed to help. The harm will come by compounding mass unemployment and depriving these citizens of consumption choices. Obamacare as Labor Tax According to pages 269–273 of the...

The "mother of all jobless recoveries. The more the market recovers, the more bearish David Rosenberg gets (which, of course, is how it should be). Today's startling prediction, which David made on Bloomberg Radio this morning? Unemployment may go to 13%. It would be hard to reconcile THAT one with the popular v-shaped recovery theory. Bloomberg: The U.S. unemployment rate may rise to a post-World War II high of 13 percent in the aftermath of the recession, said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto. “This is going to be the mother of all jobless...

Though Thursday's new economic figures indicated the nation's recession is technically over, there didn't seem to be anyone singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." Certainly not in the state's employment offices. "The crisis isn't over," said Annie Young as she filled out applications on-line at a Nebraska Workforce Development career center in Omaha. "We still have a long way to go." At the office of the state's laborers' union, the latest economic news was greeted by Tami Tietsort with a "Yeah, right." "I don't mean to be sarcastic, and I hope we're coming out of this," said Tietsort, a clerical...

U.S. consumers turned decidedly more pessimistic in October, according to a report released Tuesday, with households increasingly worried about job prospects. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its monthly Consumer Confidence Index fell to 47.7 this month, from a revised 53.4 in September, which was originally reported as 53.1. The current month's reading was well below economists' projections of 53.2, according to a survey conducted by Dow Jones Newswires. The downturn in consumer confidence at this stage of the recovery is to be expected, as it has occurred in previous recoveries (please see chart below), and does not...

Uncertainty over health care costs is preventing small businesses from adding jobs, part of the reason for the so-called jobless recovery, said by some to be underway. Gary Fields paints a compelling picture of the worries and doubts faced by small businesses, in the Wall Street Journal. One employer: "... cut overtime for many of his 150 employees in anticipation of facing fresh health-care costs. He's worried about getting hit by higher taxes next year, which would cut into income to pay for expansion, raises, bonuses, new product lines and delivery trucks." It is always safer to postpone spending, in...

Retailers expected to ask staffers to handle holidays with little help Retail sales are starting to turn around for some merchants ahead of the holidays, but employment for the season isn’t expected to follow suit. In its annual holiday hiring forecast for the retail industry, Chicago-based Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc. anticipates a slight increase in extra retail jobs for October, November and December from a year earlier, keeping seasonal employment in the sector near its lowest levels since the late 1980s. Central Ohio’s major retailers expect to be in line with the employment consulting firm’s projection. Tim Johnson, Big...