October 26, 2013

House Republicans Vote To Replace Minimum Wage With Mandatory Employment

CAPITOL HILL — In an unexpected early morning session, House Republicans passed a bill on a party-line vote that will abolish the minimum wage and replace it with what GOP leaders are officially calling Requisite Recruitment. The bill makes employment mandatory for all adult citizens aged 18 to 65. And a provision in the bill calls for compulsory employment beyond retirement age when deemed necessary by an oversight committee, which will also be responsible for suggesting the penalties for non-compliance.

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December 7, 2012

Employment Situation: ‘Losing Faith In Humanity’ Edition

When you see an article titled (“73% of New Jobs Created in Last 5 Months Are in Government“) you know you need to take a deep breath and say aloud “serenity now.” Because anybody who has paid attention to the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports over the past months and years knows that the public sector (i.e. “government”) has shed jobs almost every month in the aftermath of the Great Recession. And if you wish to maintain your sanity, I advise you to steer clear of that article’s comments section.

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August 4, 2012

If government was willing, the unemployment rate could be as low as 5%

Another month end, another jobs report. On Friday we received the numbers for August and it was both good news and bad news for President Obama. The good news is that the economy added 163,000 jobs in July which was well above analyst expectations. The bad news is that the unemployment rate ticked up from 8.2% to 8.3%. That small of a change in the unemployment rate (in either direction) isn’t really significant, but the unemployment rate could be several whole points lower by now if government did what it always does in a bad economy: spend money.

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April 6, 2012

‘Only’ 120,000 Jobs Added In March, But Public Sector Job Losses Continue To Shrink

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 120,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in March. This is the 15th straight month of job gains when combining public and private sector. It is the 25th straight month of private sector job growth. The unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.2% but this was largely due to people dropping out of the labor market. The breakdown for March is 121,000 private sector jobs added and 1000 public sector jobs lost.

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