The opioid addiction crisis caused nearly 1 million to be absent from the workforce in 2015, a new study says. The American Action Forum, a right-leaning think tank, released a study on Tuesday that revealed 919,400 people between the ages of 25 to 54 were not in the labor force due to opioid use. Additionally, […]
It’s Official: Economy Grew at a 2.9 Percent Rate to End 2017…
The economy grew at a 2.9 percent annual rate to end 2017, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Wednesday in its final update to its estimate of Gross Domestic Product. That figure was revised up from 2.5 percent in the second estimate of GDP, thanks to better consumer spending and higher business investment in inventories […]
Defying Expectations, American Businesses Added 235,000 Jobs in February…
The jobs market is red hot right now. American businesses added 235,000 jobs in February, ADP and Moody’s Analytics said Wednesday. January’s private sector payroll number was revised upward to 244,000 from the initial report of 234,000. That was far more than the 195,000 expected by economists. “The job market is red hot and threatens […]
Tech Moguls Driving Mass Layoffs in the Economy Want Universal Basic Income As a Cure…
Driverless cars! IBM Watson! News-writing robots! Amazon Go! The future is here, friends, and it apparently excludes humans. People are preparing for the next mass extinction — an evaporation, if you will — not of humans, polar bears or other creatures, but of jobs. This prospect has been sending shivers through humanity, from New York […]
Jobless Claims Plunge to 222,000, Second-Lowest Mark in Decades…
New applications for unemployment benefits dropped 7,000 to 222,000 in the second full week of February, the Department of Labor reported Thursday, the second-lowest mark of the recovery and a good sign for the economy. Forecasters had expected new jobless claims to remain steady at an ultra-low 230,000. Lower claims are good news because they […]
The Decline and Fall of General Electric, the Poster Child of Obamanomics…
Sometimes we look back a decade or so and reconsider our word choice. For instance, I used to call General Electric — with its heavy lobbying, its intimate ties to the White House, all its bets on green energy, on embryonic stem cells, on Obamacare, on industrial policy — the “for-profit arm of the Obama […]
Walmart Closes 63 Sam’s Clubs After Announcing Bonuses Attributed to Tax Cuts…
Walmart is shuttering 63 Sam’s Club stores around the country, an announcement that came shortly after the company said it would be rewarding its employees with up to $1,000 in bonuses because of the new tax cuts that were just signed into law. Some of the stores were closed Thursday, including several in the Houston […]
The Real Future of Work…
In 2013, Diana Borland and 129 of her colleagues filed into an auditorium at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Borland had worked there for the past 13 years as a medical transcriptionist, typing up doctors’ audio recordings into written reports. The hospital occasionally held meetings in the auditorium, so it seemed like any other […]
Unemployment Rate for Black Americans Hits Record Low…
The unemployment rate for black Americans hit a record low of 6.8 percent in December, which is the lowest level seen in the history of the data, CNN reported. “It marks a swift comeback for black workers, who suffered through extremely high unemployment during the Great Recession,” the article states. “Black unemployment peaked at 16.8 […]
Where the Jobs Were in December: Who’s Hiring… And Who Isn’t…
December was expected to be a weaker month than October and November, as a result of the double-whammy of the post-hurricane rebound ending and an adverse winter storm effect, but virtually nobody on Wall Street expected the 3-sigma outlier December payrolls report to be as poor as it was. So which sectors were responsible for […]