Free Republic

A big puzzle looms over the U.S. economy: Friday's jobs report tells us that the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7% from a peak of 10% at the height of the Great Recession. But at the same time, only 63.2% of Americans 16 or older are participating in the labor force, which, while up a bit in March, is down substantially since 2000. As recently as the late 1990s, the U.S. was a nation in which employment, job creation and labor force participation went hand in hand. That is no longer the case. What's going on? Think of the labor...

One of the great memes out there in trying to diagnose persistently high unemployment and anemic job growth during what is still, I argue, the Great Recession is the so-called “skills gap”. The idea here is that the fact that there are millions of unfilled job openings at the same time millions of people can’t find work can be chalked up to a lack of a skills match between unemployed workers an open positions. To pick one random example out of many, here’s the way US News and World Report put it last year: Some 82 percent of manufacturers say...

The Foreign Ministry's workers union has called for a general strike Sunday as part of an ongoing labor dispute. All 103 of Israel's embassies, consulates, and diplomatic delegations across the world will be closed, including the ministry's headquarters in Jerusalem. The workers union added that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will not be able to enter his office. The Foreign Ministry's employees have been engaged in a struggle to improve their working conditions for more than a year, and the struggle has led them to lock horns with the Finance Ministry, whom they claim refuses to acknowledge diplomats' rights and improve...

Federal labor leaders are disappointed with President Obama’s proposal to raise federal employee pay by 1 percent next year. The proposal will be included in the administration’s budget, which Obama will announce next week. His spending plan also will include a 1 percent raise for members of the military. “I strongly believe that federal employees deserve more, and this amount is inadequate,” said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “There is no question in my mind that inadequate raises will have consequences on recruitment and retention.” Kelley says a 3.3 percent increase would be “fair...

President Obama is considering using his executive authority to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors, he told Senate Democrats during a closed meeting at the White House. [Snip] Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing for an across-the-board hike in the minimum hourly wage, from $7.25 to $10.10. But Republicans are cool to the plan, warning it could hurt the economy. Federal contractors represent only a fraction of the nation’s employees. Businesses that together received more than $446 billion in federal contracts employ some 2 million workers, only some of whom are paid the minimum wage. Still, an increase for...

While union and media reports claim state employees have taken large compensation cuts, a look at the numbers shows that taxpayers are paying much more per employee working for them. In fact, the state is paying hundreds of millions more for far fewer workers. The contracts for most of the state's 47,000 workers ended at the start of 2014 and the state of Michigan is currently in negotiations with its employee unions. However, contract negotiations stalled and the Michigan Civil Service Commission is considering recommendations from an impasse panel. In the meantime, media and union reports have been claiming that...

The GOP needs to oppose the White House’s immigration plan and expose its flaws.Several prominent amnesty advocates, including Mark Zuckerberg and top Obama administration officials, have argued that amnesty is a civil right. The claim is, of course, preposterous on its face. Under this reasoning, every immigrant currently living in the U.S. on a temporary visa has the right to refuse to leave when that visa expires. And every household in a foreign country has the right to enter the U.S. illegally tomorrow and demand the Obama administration’s amnesty for “DREAMers” and their relatives. To say that amnesty is a...

Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head. "This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold. It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the...

Many people feel strongly about not shopping on Thanksgiving. Well, I have a cause of my own. Not doing business with any company that offshores its call centers. After dealing with some script-reading cretin out in God-Knows-Where because Old Navy's online credit card payment isn't working, I've decided that enough is enough. With so many Americans out of work, businesses should set up call centers here in the USA, not in some Third World slum half a world away. This may not be PC, but we all know it's true.

I admit I often demonize abortion supporters in my mind. The ones I usually deal with are the hard core industry or political types, and they can indeed come across beyond cold and calloused. Nevertheless, having been convicted through Scripture, I’ve been trying (although admittedly failing as often as I succeed – but I’m getting better, truly!) to more even-handedly communicate with them. This week I read Romans 15:15-16 and took the passage our direction. The pertinent sentence: I’m doing this because God gave me the gift to be a servant of Christ Jesus to people who are not Jewish....

Women in the workplace isn't just about feminism, it's economic necessity with the GOP-shredded safety net During a HuffPost Live segment last week titled “Masculinity Now,” Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes aired a series of expletive-laden perspectives on modern femininity, none of them positive. While McInnes’ host and co-panelists maintained their calm, the blogger and publisher ranted that “feminism has made women less happy,” citing cultural pressure to “feign” toughness and inappropriate presence in the workforce as culprits. In short, McInnes’ claim is that the majority of women are naturally predisposed to derive satisfaction from “being domestic and shaping lives” rather...

Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines. There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers. That means there were about 1.07 people getting some...

<p>On Tuesday, the BLS engrossed in the same frenzy of openly making up data like the Dept of Labor has been with the initial claims data ever since early September when it started upgrading its California "systems" and never finished, announced that while only 140K or so jobs were created in September, nearly 700K full-time jobs were added as over 500K part-time jobs were converted into full-timers. On the surface this is great news... until one actually looks for empirical evidence that this is happening anywhere besides the data manipulating, massaging and fabricating models used by the BLS. And one certainly won't find it at the biggest private employer in the US - Walmart, which just announced that a whopping 475,000 of its employees earn at least $25,000 a year. Great news, right? Sure, until one considers that WMT has over 1 million employees, which means that well over 50% of Wal-Mart's employees make a tiny $25,000 year.</p>

<p>The two workers, whose names weren't immediately released, died at the scene after they were hit by an eastbound train, sources close to the investigation said.</p>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than half of low-wage workers employed by the largest U.S. fast-food restaurants earn so little that they must rely on public assistance to get by, according to a study released on Tuesday. This ends up costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year, the study said. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and public benefit programs show 52 percent of fast-food cooks, cashiers and other "front-line" staff had relied on at least one form of public assistance, such as Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit program, between 2007 and 2011, researchers at...

Video of why we can't compete with the Chinese: http://static.video.qq.com/TPout.swf?auto=1&vid=r010673xh67

Headline only.

OAKLAND -- A group of people working at a Habitat for Humanity construction site in East Oakland that former President Jimmy Carter will visit next week were robbed at gunpoint, police said. The incident happened at the site of a 12-home development at 9507 Edes Ave. about 1:40 p.m. Tuesday. Habitat for Humanity staff members and AmeriCorps workers were accosted by four men who robbed them of cell phones, wallets and tools, police said. One of the robbers fired a shot into the air and pistol-whipped a man, who declined medical attention, authorities said.

Don’t call the federal workers waiting to buy lunch from downtown Washington’s food trucks “nonessentials.” It’s like being branded with a scarlet letter N, or ending up the punchline of a late-night comedy bit that’s actually not that funny when there are bills to pay. Essential. Nonessential. These are the terms commonly, although not officially, used for employees who find themselves in one of two controversial categories: starting players or benched, during a partial government shutdown that is being threatened. **SNIP** “It’s like a stab in the back. Like being told in high school that you’re average and not in...

Walmart gleefully reported on Friday September 6, 2013 about the low turnout for the walkout sponsored by an affiliate of the United Food and Commercial International Union (UFCW) indicating that unions no longer have any teeth.