Free Republic

Most presidential campaigns feature a familiar refrain: Each candidate promises to create millions of new jobs. The 2020 primaries are unusual in that nearly all the Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, are solemnly pledging to destroy millions of jobs by ending the shale oil and gas revolution. The Democrats’ war on fossil fuels was on full display at the debate in Los Angeles last month, where Joe Biden, the supposed moderate, was asked if he would rein in America’s shale oil and gas production even if it meant “thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands”...

During Monday’s broadcast of CBS’s “This Morning,” former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) sounded off on his outspokenness against President Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming Senate impeachment trial. Flake, who was never shy about his distrust of Trump, said it is “difficult” for Republican lawmakers to speak out against Trump because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Job openings plunged to their lowest level in nearly two years as hiring surged in November and the employment market got tighter, the Labor Department reported Friday. Total vacancies tumbled by 561,000 to 6.8 million for the month, the lowest since February 2018, according to the government's Job Openings and Labor Market Turnover Survey. Despite the big drop, openings still outnumbered Americans considered unemployed by nearly 1 million. The vacancy rate nudged down to 4.3%.

TAMPA, Florida — Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday that the Senate’s passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement is a “huge win” for American workers and farmers. Pence’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News, which came on his bus tour between Tampa and Orlando, for which he was conducting a campaign swing up the all-important I-4 corridor in the Sunshine State, came moments after the U.S. Senate passed the USMCA, 89-10. The overwhelming Senate vote came a month after the House in mid-December similarly passed the deal with overwhelming bipartisan support, as the USMCA sailed through...

If you go by the Labor Department’s statistics, the job market was very hot in November. Then it became cold in December. Average the two out and — in true Goldilocks fashion — the economy (like the porridge) may now be just right. I’ve always told you that the government’s employment stats are flaky. Various adjustments are supposed to take care of things like Christmas hiring and new companies just coming into being. But they don’t. They only confuse things. And only after many months or even years of revisions do we learn what the job market was really like....

People who want to work should be allowed to work. That includes people who once went to jail. With President Donald Trump's support, Congress spends your money giving ex-cons "employment assistance." Why bother? State laws often make such employment impossible. Courtney Haveman had an alcohol problem. When she was 19, she got a DUI. Then she took a swing at a security guard. "I made dumb decisions," she admits in my new video. "Served three days in jail." Eight years later, and now sober, Courtney enrolled in beauty school. Such schools invite applicants to "turn your interest in beauty into...

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,...

... During the first 11 quarters of the Trump Presidency, wages for the bottom 10% of earners over age 25 rose an average 5.9% annually compared to 2.4% during Barack Obama’s second term, according to the latest demographic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wages for the middle two quartiles increased 3.2% compared to 2.2% and 2.7% between 2012 and 2016. Wage gains for the top 10% have held steady at about 3%. Less educated workers have also seen the strongest gains. Wages have risen at a 6.1% annual clip for workers over 25 without a high school degree...

The labor force remains tight, wages are rising, and people are coming off the sidelines to find work, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) monthly Employment Situation Report. Highlights from the report include: the unemployment rate remained at 3.5 percent, matching the lowest rate since May 1969; nonfarm job gains were 145,000, bringing 2019’s total to 2.1 million; the U-4, U-5, and U-6 alternative measures of labor underutilization were all at series lows; and the employment-population ratio for prime-age women increased 0.3 percentage points to 74.4 percent, which is 3.1 percentage points above the November...

Can you have a job with high satisfaction that also pays six figures? What about first-time job hunters? The answer to both questions is, “Yes.” If you choose wisely. The jobs environment is getting rosier, at least judging by the latest jobs figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.5% in December and remained near a 50-year low. The labor force participation rate was 63.2% in December, unchanged from the previous month, helped by an increase in women aged 25 to 34 looking for work and/or getting jobs. The 2019 best job for college...

Every college student knows that, once they graduate, landing the job of their dreams isn’t going to just happen. Yet, students still downplay the difficulties they will face, either because they don’t understand the job market or because they put too much stock in their skills, thinking that the competition won’t stand a chance. The reality is that in a world shaped by the internet, students must learn some basic self-marketing skills to stand out in their field. Ignoring the need to have a strong professional presence—on- and offline—won’t do you any favors. So, the job for you, the enterprising...

The remarkable jobs rally at U.S. small businesses continued in December. That’s according to the latest National Federation of Independent Business monthly employment survey, due out later today. NFIB’s Chief Economist William Dunkelberg reports: Job creation did not change from November, with an average addition of 0.29 workers per firm, the highest level since May. Net job creation had faded from February’s 0.52 workers per firm to September’s 0.10, but is back in strong territory. Finding qualified workers remains the top issue for 23 percent reporting this as their number one problem, 4 points below August’s record high.The desire to...

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, story here.

Investor, CEO, and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says he would allow investors and employers to hire the “the best” workers from around the world instead of Americans. “This country needs more immigrants and we should be out looking for immigrants,” Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on January 5.: For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want to get the best one....

Voters overwhelmingly want companies to train and hire Americans before importing more legal immigrants or visa workers. But liberals are far more likely than conservatives to say Congress should allow companies to import more immigrants to take jobs sought by U.S. graduates and sidelined workers, according to Rasmussen’s December survey of 1,250 likely voters. The survey asked voters: When businesses say they are having trouble finding Americans to take jobs in construction, manufacturing, hospitality and other service work, what is generally best for the country? Is it better for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit [Americans]?...

No one country has sent more of its nationals to the United States over the last decade than China, newly released Census Bureau data reveals. Between 2018 and 2019, China replaced Mexico as the largest sending country of foreign-born immigrants to the U.S. over the last decade. In 2006, more Mexican nationals arrived in the U.S. than Chinese, Indians, and Canadians combined. Fast forward to 2018 and China now sends the most foreign-born immigrants to the U.S. — surpassing India, Mexico, and Canada. Since 2010, alone, China has sent more foreign-born immigrants to the U.S. than any other country. (Census...

2019 was a very good year, despite a dysfunctional Congress. A few weeks ago, a friend said she had noticed that clothing was getting less and less expensive and, in fact, many items seemed to be getting less expensive. Economists call a general decline in prices, deflation and a general rise in prices, inflation. At any given time, some prices are falling and others are rising, depending on supply, demand and efficiency of production. Innovations come along, enabling people to get a better product or service for the same or lower price. Some innovations eliminate the need for some products,...

... Mr. Grant clearly remembered Aug. 7, the day the Trump administration performed sweeping immigration raids on seven chicken plants in central Mississippi. He remembered the news flashing on his phone: 680 Hispanic workers arrested. He remembers seeing an opportunity. “I figured there should be some jobs,” he said. He figured right. The raids were believed to be the largest statewide immigration crackdown in recent history and a partial fulfillment of President Trump’s vow to remove millions of undocumented workers from the country. The impact on Mississippi’s immigrant community has been devastating. For nonimmigrant workers, the aftermath has forced them...

Rank-and-file workers are getting bigger raises this year—at least in percentage terms—than bosses. Wages for the typical worker—nonsupervisory employees who account for 82% of the workforce—are rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade, a sign that the labor market has tightened sufficiently to convey bigger pay increases to lower-paid employees. Gains for those workers have accelerated much of this year, a time when the unemployment rate fell to a half-century low. A short supply of workers, increased poaching and minimum-wage increases have helped those nearer to the bottom of the pay scale. Pay for the bottom 25%...

In general, it sucks to get fired. Seldom do I celebrate someone getting their job torched—oftentimes liberal media outlets bring it upon themselves, but it’s still never a good thing, especially around the holidays. And it’s maddening to a certain extent when you know jobs will be lost because Democrats keep peddling trash economic policies. The minimum wage hike is the mecca of all things bad. These jobs aren’t meant to support families, but Democrats seem keen on peddling this policy that will lead to job losses, cut hours, and smaller paychecks. It’s already happened in New York. In Seattle,...