Free Republic

Americans remain pessimistic about the economy despite huge job growth and cooling inflation. A slew of recent polls reveal that Americans are still struggling with high costs and aren’t convinced that the U.S. can stave off a recession as the Federal Reserve takes steps to slow the economy down. That presents a challenge for President Biden, who took a victory lap last week after federal data showed that the U.S. added a shocking 517,000 jobs in January, blowing away analysts’ predictions of slowing job growth. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4 percent, the lowest since 1969. “Add that all up,...

Dell Technologies is the latest technology company to announce job cuts, saying Monday that it will be cutting about 5 percent of its workforce, or about 6,600 jobs. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, Dell will cut 5 percent of its global workforce to respond to a “challenging global economic environment.” Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in an email to employees that the company is facing market conditions that “continue to erode with an uncertain future,” which will require restructuring the organization and letting some employees go. “In the coming days and weeks, you’ll begin to...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published a jobs report yesterday [DATA LINK] that has stunned the professional financial class. However, those who have followed the BLS data assemblies were laughing – not surprised. Eventually, if this continues, the BLS pretzel logic will start using terms like “eleventy.” Throughout 2022, the BLS modified the underlying data they used to assemble their jobs reporting. The latest release shows that 517,000 jobs were gained in the labor market, despite every other economic indicator showing we are in an economy of contraction. The question becomes, why the disconnect? There are two surveys that...

The Hill has an interesting story: 5 takeaways on a surprisingly strong jobs report. “The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January, more than doubling Wall Street expectations and turning up its nose at prognosticators of an imminent recession. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.4 percent, the lowest level since 1969. Analysts were expecting it to move in the opposite direction, ticking up to 3.6 percent.” Yes, I was expecting U-3 unemployment to increase to 3.6% as well. What happened? Seasonal adjustments (BLS doens’t provide non-seasonally adjusted data). But the shocking headline (mostly due to seasonal adjustements) was not as...

A stronger-than-expected jobs report has put the wind at President Biden’s back ahead of his State of the Union address next week, and it could provide additional momentum as he prepares a reelection announcement in the coming weeks. Biden on Friday hailed new data from the Labor Department that showed the economy added 517,000 jobs in January, far exceeding economists’ expectations. The president wasted little time connecting the positive development with next Tuesday’s address to the nation. “Next week, I’ll be reporting on the state of the union. But today, I’m happy to report that the state of the union...

The U.S. labor market clocked a shockingly strong month in January, adding 517,000 jobs and dipping down to 3.4 percent unemployment, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department. The numbers blew past expectations. Analysts were projecting an increase of around 185,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to edge up to 3.6 percent. In December, the unemployment rate dipped back down to 3.5 percent and added 260,000 new jobs, according to revised figures released Friday. “This is an unbelievably strong unemployment report, not to suggest there’s a problem with credibility. The unemployment rate takes out the recent historic...

President Biden had better give his State of the Union Address before the economy worsens any more. In January, the Challenger, Gray and Christmas jobs cuts index was a doozy. Jobs cuts rose 440%. This is happening as The Federal Reserve keeps its feet on the monetary brake pedal. Many of the job cuts are in the tech sector, but job cuts are now spreading across the economy as a recession looms. This morning, the US Treasury 10-year yield is down only -3.5 basis points, but it is Europe where the action is. UK is down -16.2 basis points and...

Somewhere along the line, someone noticed that in software development, a few people are self-taught, and then suddenly they (erroneously) correlated software development with easy money. The truth is that it isn’t that easy.I’m not going to suggest that the field is overall something super difficult like Physical Chemistry, but it’s also not trivial to learn like my first job at McDonald’s. Though to be honest, getting those cone swirls right was for sure a pride point! I often see questions like, “how can I teach myself to code and have a full-time programmer job in 6 months.” I imagine...

The US economy is slowing down. In fact, ADP jobs added just printed at 106k in January, the lowest reading since August 2021. ADP jobs added follows the slow down of M2 Money growth YoY as The Fed tightens its monetary policy. Do I detect a trend (orange line)? I doubt that January’s ADP report will be mentioned in Biden’s State of the Union address.

The city of Chicago, Illinois, in partnership with big business, is launching an effort to score jobs for foreign H-1B visa workers who have been laid off from their tech jobs in recent weeks. The city’s World Business Chicago group, which is a public-private firm, has joined P33, the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, the Corporate Coalition of Chicago, and others to fill jobs at companies like Caterpillar, Illinois Tech, John Deere, Ulta Beauty, and Walgreens with foreign H-1B visa workers who have recently been laid off.

The cloud software company Workday plans to cut hundreds of jobs as it lays off about 3 percent of its global workforce. The company told employees in a message on Tuesday that it decided to restructure and realign some teams across the company, leading to the layoffs, the majority of which will be those working on product and technology, according to a copy of the message from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The message said company leaders will meet with the affected employees and expect notifications to be completed by the end of the day Tuesday, Pacific Standard Time. “While...

Nationally, it takes nearly four full-time minimum wage workers to reasonably afford a two-bedroom rental. Affordability for minimum wage workers is tightest in Austin. There would need to be over five full-time minimum wage workers to afford a two-bedroom rental in Austin. In cities with a $7.25 an hour minimum wage, an average of over 3.5 full-time workers are needed to make the typical two-bedroom rental affordable.In cities with minimum wages set higher than that, an average of 2.5 full-time minimum wage workers are needed to make the typical two-bedroom rental affordable, despite many of these cities having higher-than-average rents....

Its just like The Federal Reserve to be cutting US money growth as US jobs cuts accelerate. The latest US money growth numbers are out and they are daunting. M2 Money growth YoY is now negative at -1.8%. M1 money, a narrower defition of money, is now down -3.6% YoY. This is happening as the labor market is seeing a wave of layoffs. We are just the stepping stone for The Fed. As The Fed ponders inflation versus job growth, its a case of “Him or Me, What’s it going to be?”

“In Pennsylvania, the people should decide what path is best for them, not have it decided by some arbitrary requirement or any arbitrary limitation,” Shapiro said during the executive order signing ceremony last week. What Shapiro did is a great idea, and any states that have not already done this should follow suit. Regardless of whether a politician is a Democrat or a Republican, they should care about the credentialism plaguing our workforce. Arbitrary degree requirements are an expensive barrier to entry that disproportionately affect the working class. In a country where people carry nearly $2 trillion in student loan...

Music streaming service Spotify announced Monday that it is slashing hundreds of jobs in the latest round of layoffs in the tech sector. Spotify said it would cut 6 percent of its staff, or about 600 workers, based on its last earnings report. “Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us. In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a statement. Ek announced...

A college professor believes that he has a solution to put men without college degrees back to work in blue-collar jobs – particularly those who “feel out-of-place in the modern service economy.” Professor Bryan Caplan, a George Mason University economist, wants to see a deregulation of the building and construction industry, which he argues will boost job opportunities for men without college degrees without requiring massive government subsidies. He laid out his ideas in a Substack article and provided further commentary to The College Fix via email. Caplan regularly writes and talks on the problems in the housing industry and...

First came the so-called Sanhe Gods, male migrant workers who ventured from the hinterlands to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and other metropolises in search of gainful employment, only to find themselves slaving away in Dickensian “shady factories.” Disenchanted with China’s “struggle culture” the ironically named Sanhe Gods adopted cynical mottos like “work one day and play for three” or “pick up your bucket and run,” in direct and provocative contrast to the motivational propaganda posters on Chinese streets, bearing messages like “Struggle in youth, a brilliant future to come,” “Fight unrestrainedly, chase dreams,” and “If you don’t work hard, no-one can...

I watched Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre giving Biden credit for the lowest unemployment rate in US history thanks to his economic policies. And Biden mentioned that he inherited a terrible economy from Trump. Hmmm. Let’s let the data talk. Covid was horrific (I almost died from it), but it was the government response to Covid there was disastorous. Government shutdowns (and the masking of the populace) killed off numerous small businesses and sent jobless claims soaring in 2020 (white line) and U-3 unemployment rate rose to the highest level since The Great Depression. The response from The Federal...

The last time China is believed to have recorded a population decline was during the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s, Mao Zedong’s disastrous drive for collective farming and industrialization that produced a massive famine killing tens of millions of people. Also Tuesday, the bureau released data showing China’s economic growth fell to its second-lowest level in at least four decades last year under pressure from anti-virus controls and a real estate slump. The world’s No. 2 economy grew by 3% in 2022, less than half of the previous year’s 8.1%, the data showed.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, after crawling to a first formal term, announced a plan so brilliant that it could have only come from Elizabeth Warren or a drunken Marxist. And I don’t mean Groucho.“Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday used her second State of the State address to unveil a wide-ranging agenda for 2023, vowing to tie New York’s minimum wage to the rate of inflation”Brilliant plan.Then every time the cost of goods and services rises, so will wages, which will increase costs and lead to a rise in the cost of goods and services, which will increase wages which will increase...