According to a poll earlier this year, voters have a higher opinion of cockroaches than Congressmen. President Obama’s personal popularity remains solid, but his job approval rating is going down. Why are our elected officials unpopular? It might just be because they are not listening. In poll after poll, the …
At the height of the recession, one in 10 Americans who wanted to work could not find employment. Since then, the unemployment rate has gradually fallen. Typically, when the unemployment rate goes down, it’s because more people find jobs. In this recession, however, employment rates have been flat. In February, …
The November employment report appeared to be good news. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, the lowest level since 2009, and the economy created 146,000 jobs. However, a closer reading of the details shows that the labor market is not recovering any faster but instead continuing its long, painful …
The October jobs report essentially agrees with the rest of the current data on the economy—the economy is growing slowly, too slowly to bring down unemployment rapidly. In fact, the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent in October and the economy created about 171,000 jobs, roughly equal to the usual …
When a questioner at Tuesday’s presidential debate stated that women make only 72 cents for every dollar that men make, both President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney agreed. Not so fast. This figure is highly misleading. The statistic comes from a Census Bureau report (see figure 2 here) comparing the …
In a recent Heritage in Focus, Heritage expert James Sherk discusses the recent unemployment report. Listen to the full podcast, here. The recent jobs report released was extraordinary. For the first time in its history, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that the average length of unemployment was nearly …
