Another month of weak job growth seems especially cruel after the greater-than-expected employment gains in February. But workers were already onto the trend, leaving the labor market in droves throughout March despite the anomaly of a statistical surge in hiring the month before.
Washington frets endlessly over the problems that Social Security and Medicare, both of which are projected to exhaust their trust funds in the coming decades, might cause the budget. But two new reports underscore the serious problems they might solve for the country.
Take Social Security. For years, pension experts have spoken of the “three-legged stool” of retirement savings: Social Security, employer pensions and private savings. In recent years, however, that stool has begun to wobble, and today, Social Security is basically the only leg holding it up.
Even as the politicians in Washington -- of both parties, alas -- talk about cutting Social Security benefits, more evidence keeps piling up that tomorrow's retirees will have higher financial needs than today's seniors. While nobody wants to admit it, the truth is that we should be talking about how to increase Social Security benefits in coming years, not decrease them.
Last week, over 80,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from an ExxonMobil pipeline in Arkansas. Twenty-two homes were evacuated and the cost of cleanup will be high. So, who will foot the bill? ExxonMobil? Taxpayers? Unfortunately, the answer looks like it will taxpayers will pay for cleanup for a reason that we should be very concerned about as discussion continues over the Keystone pipeline.
A few weeks ago I wrote about a part-time employee at Urban Outfitters who went to work with the flu in New York City becase she didn't have paid sick time and couldn't afford to stay home from her job as a cashier. So, for eight contagious hours, she dealt with the public.
Edwin Guzman already lost his job once for union-organizing. But today, he and several hundred fast food workers across New York City are on strike anyway.
The 5.6 million young adults who are willing and able to work but cannot find a job make up 45 percent of America’s unemployed workforce, while another 4.7 million are stuck in part-time jobs when they are seeking full-time employment, according to a new report from Demos. In total, the U.S. needs to add 4.1 million jobs for young workers — ages 18 to 34 — to return to pre-recession levels of employment.
A funny thing happened on Fox Business News last night, where I appeared on a panel to discuss President Obama's new initiative to map the human brain, spending $100 million next year to get started: Everyone on the show gave a thumbs up to the plan, including my two conservative co-panelists and the host.
That's the first time I've ever been on the same side as everyone else on Fox.
In an country where there are 3.3 job seekers for every one available job, one would hope that those lucky enough to have a full time job would be earning a salary they can live on. Unfortunately, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's just the opposite. America's most common jobs are usually the worst paying ones.
Nowadays, whenever Social Security comes up in policy debates around Washington, the discussion often focuses on how best to cut benefits in order to shore up the program’s finances.
It's a tradition at this point: At least once a year, Google incurs the ire of (primarily) American conservatives because of a doodle (or sometimes even the absence of a doodle!) on its homepage. In 2006, the multibillion-dollar, multinational corporation chose not to mark Memorial Day, which The National Review pronounced "kind of sad." In 2007, the magazine asked, "What, no Easter?
Chris Christie hasn't been very popular in GOP circles since he praised Barack Obama at the Jersey Shore on the eve of the presidential election. But Christie's national luster should be fading for a much better reason: He has one of the worst economic records of any governor in the United States.
New Jersey has the seventh highest unemployment rate in the country -- 9.3 percent.
President Obama's proposal to spend $100 million next year mapping the human brain, as part of a larger multi-year project, is already drawing firing from critics of government spending.
But if there were ever a clear payoff from government spending, it's spending for science. Consider a the findings of a 2011 study of the economic benefits of the government's massive Human Genome Project, which took 13 years to complete.
With comments straight out of President Reagan's "welfare queens" playbook, Paul Ryan is attempting to justify his proposed budgets cuts to various programs that help the poor, claiming the safety net "provides a powerful disincentive to get ahead." Never mind that since the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Welfare Reform Act, aka, "welfare reform," most of the remaining income assistance programs are both means-tested and work-based.
The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 would peg the minimum hourly pay for tipped workers to 70% of the standard, federal rate over the next three years. Supporters like Restaurant Opportunities Centers United believe few parts of the workforce stand to gain as much from the success of such legislation as servers.
The indictment last week of 35 teachers and administrators in Atlanta for manipulating test scores is just the latest chapter in that city's long festering "teacher cheating" scandal. In turn, Atlanta is just one of many cities where evidence has surfaced that educators fudged testing data.
Perhaps the best way to think of these cheating scandals is that they are the result of a natural experiment: What happens when you change incentives so that low test numbers translate into pain and high test numbers translate into rewards?
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report recently with the self-concluding title thatRecent Deep State Higher Education Cuts May Harm Students and the Economy for Years to Come.
With comments straight out of President Reagan's "welfare queens" playbook, Paul Ryan is attempting to justify his proposed budgets cuts to various programs that help the poor, claiming the safety net "provides a powerful disincentive to get ahead." Never mind that since the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Welfare Reform Act, aka, "welfare reform," most of the remaining income assistance programs are both means-tested and work-based.