When it comes to creating jobs, North Dakota has found the right formula. The state has the largest percentage increase in employment over the past year and was the fastest of all 50 to recover from the recession. The reason is simple: energy production. “North Dakota has been the poster child for what can happen when we unleash free enterprise and allow states to develop and commercialize their resources,” Heritage’s Nick Loris wrote recently on The Foundry. “North Dakota is drilling at record pace.” The state’s unemployment rate is 3.4 …
The House Rules Committee advanced three proposals Wednesday that may help curb a growing problem for the nation’s economy: stagnant job growth in the technology sector. The three pending free trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and Korea are up for full House approval next week. Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also said that the Senate will vote on the agreements next week as well. 115, 800 U.S. hi-tech industry jobs were lost in 2010-the second straight year of decline for the industry- according to a report released by …
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning that employers added 117,000 jobs in July, up from June’s dismal 18,000 but still below the number needed to keep pace with population growth. The unemployment rate also fell 0.1 percent to 9.1 percent. Get complete analysis from Heritage’s Rea Hederman and James Sherk, who produce a monthly jobs and employment report. All eyes will again be on Wall Street today. After the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 500 points yesterday, the world eagerly awaits reaction to today’s jobs report. …
Figures released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics provide less encouragement than today’s GDP report. Total compensation increased by only 1.5 percent in 2009 (without adjusting for inflation) – the lowest increase on record. If a turnaround has begun, workers are not feeling it in their wallets. However, this pain has not been distributed equally throughout the economy. In the private sector, total compensation grew just 1.2 percent in 2009. On the other hand the compensation paid to state and local government employees grew 2.4 percent. The average government …
Unemployment has risen above 10 percent and no one in Washington seems to understand what is going on. Yesterday, a little noticed release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shed important light onto the job situation. The BLS’s Business Employment Dynamics (BED) program uses unemployment insurance (UI) records to track job private sector job gains and job losses. Because the data comes from administrative records it is highly accurate, but it also takes eight months to process. Yesterday the BLS finally released the data for the first quarter of …
Another month, another 263,000 jobs lost under the Obama administration. According to Bureau of Labor and Statistics data released this morning, the United States economy has lost 3.6 million net jobs since President Barack Obama was sworn into office and the unemployment rate has risen from 7.6 % to 9.8%. It was not supposed to be this way. The experts in the Obama administration promised the American people that the President’s $787 billion stimulus package would create 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. According to the Obama administration’s …
Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly job report showing that the economy lost 345,000 jobs in May. This brings the total number of jobs lost in the first full three months since the economic stimulus package was passed to 1.5 million jobs. Countering these inconvenient truths, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a new “accelerated” “roadmap to recovery”, which the AP dryly notes “is neither new nor accelerated.” Officially, the Obama administration claims their stimulus plan has already “saved or created” 150,000 jobs, …
