Jobs

How Much are Replacement Jobs Helping the Economy?

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America?s high unemployment rate will come down as total spending picks up and the economy recovers. Some of the unemployment is the result of the recession, but some is the result of long-term trends. Since 2000, manufacturing jobs have fallen by 5.4 million, and when the economy comes back, manufacturing will not recover much ? […]

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It’s Time for an Employment Revolution

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Unemployment continues to be one of the biggest problems of the great recession. Despite its recent fall, it is still at 9.7%. But if we look at labor force and employment trends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey back to 2000, the employment situation looks even worse. The civilian labor force drifts […]

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Which College Degrees Have the Best Job Opportunities?

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There were 1,524,092 BA degree graduates for the year ending June 2007 — the last year of complete data. Graduates with a BA degree show a nearly unbroken increase since the 1960’s. A total of 22.5 million people received BA degrees in the United States between 1990 and the year ending June 2007. During the […]

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Not All Jobs Are Created Equal

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Is employment looking up? In Newsweek, Daniel Gross says that “Jobs Are on the Way!,” noting that even though employment is still off 11,000 jobs, the all-important service sector has added 58,000 jobs. He cites the 0.2% drop in the unemployment rate and a few other markers of improvement, concluding America’s job market is turning […]

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How National Health Care Will Improve Your Salary

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The latest turn in the health care debate drops the public option but would extend Medicare eligibility downward to begin at 55 years old. Since the words “public option” bring automatic opposition, health care reform supporters in Congress apparently decided to address the politics with some new words even though Medicare is already a public […]

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We Can’t Buy Our Way Out of a Recession

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Black Friday is over. This year, there were many news stories of hope and optimism that consumers would rush out and buy, buy, buy. The broadcast news stations sent their local correspondents to talk with mall owners and department store managers to get their forecast. The ones I saw used their interviews to plug discounts, […]

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What’s the Real Unemployment Rate?

The country got a bit of good news late last week when the unemployment rate dropped to 10%, with the economy losing only 11,000 jobs and revised numbers for September and October lower than originally estimated. While the news was able to push stocks up a bit for the week as more investors see this […]

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It’s Time to Stop Paying Attention to Inflation

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The October report of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed an increase of one tenth of one percent in the general price level from August to September. Publishing a monthly index provides several ways to look at price changes and inflation. The monthly CPI can be compared with […]

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How the Minimum Wage Increase Really Affects Job Numbers

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The minimum wage went up to $7.25 an hour on July 24th, a 10.7% increase over last year, as the last of a three-year planned increase passed by Congress. Since inflation is reported at 3.8% for the year the real wage — actual buying power of the minimum wage — went up for 2009. The […]

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The Recovery Can’t Come Without Job Creation

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Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran a story titled “More Signs Point to Economic Recovery” where it reported that “[an] expansion of manufacturing growth in consumer spending and improved home sales indicated Thursday that the U.S. economy is on the mend.” While spending is up, the claim that the economy is on the mend ignores […]

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Can a National Risk Pool Save Health Insurance?

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President Obama, in a prime time address to Congress, pledged to reform health care in America. All types of insurance are supposed to let people pay premiums into a risk pool that generates a reserve fund to pay losses. Insurance companies employ mathematicians to analyze actuarial data on mortality — accidents, sickness, disability, retirement and […]

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To Create Jobs, Industries Must Transform

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The decline of the American Textile industry is well documented. In 1990, there were 928,000 people working in just the apparel industry; by 2008 it was down to 198,000. The decline is more than double the jobs lost in the automobile industry. Most of us see our clothes marked “Made in China” or some far […]

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Green Jobs Bring Both Benefits and Costs

As part of the Reinvestment and Recovery Act passed earlier this spring, President Obama announced plans to create green jobs. “A green, renewable-energy economy isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, far-off future. It is now. It is creating jobs now,” he said. The new law provides money and development programs for adopting environmental technologies and helping to expand […]

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