Most state unemployment insurance fund accounts became insolvent in the wake of the Great Recession because states did not adequately fund them in the early to mid-2000s recovery. States that responded to the insolvency by cutting the duration of unemployment benefits did not save significant amounts of money or boost employment. There are no clear … Continue reading
Low teacher pay is not news. Over the years, all sorts of observers have argued that skimpy teacher salaries keep highly qualified individuals out of the profession. One recent study found that a major difference between the education system in the United States and those in other nations with high-performing students is that the United … Continue reading
in the past six months, unemployment has fallen much faster than expected, from 6.7 to 6.1 percent. And as you can see above, 88 percent of that has been due to declining long-term unemployment. Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at The long-term unemployed might finally be getting jobs – The Washington Post. … Continue reading
In the week ending July 19, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 284,000, a decrease of 19,000 from the previous week’s revised level. This is the lowest level for initial claims since February 18, 2006 when they were 283,000. The previous week’s level was revised up by 1,000 from 302,000 to 303,000. … Continue reading
More young people are grabbing debt to go to college, but they can’t punch the ticket to full-fledged adulthood, because college-grad wages are growing at historically pitiful levels. In fact, the incomes of recent college grads are growing so glacially that they make the rest of the country look like we’re discovering $100 bills in … Continue reading
Wage growth in the US has been stuck at about 2 per cent a year, just about keeping up with inflation but well below the levels of up to 3.5 per cent that productivity would suggest. The quarterly Employment Cost index, another widely used measure of wages, has also seen consistently sluggish readings over the … Continue reading
The U.S. labor market is still a long way from healed. The unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, down from 10 percent in 2009, is misleading: Long-term unemployment accounts for a much bigger share of the total than usual. Millions who would like full-time jobs are having to work part time. And millions more have given up … Continue reading
Because the short-term unemployment rate has returned to its pre-recession average, one important implication—if the hypothesis that the long-term unemployed are largely on the margins of the labor market is correct—is that further declines in short-term unemployment would be expected to be associated with rising inflation and stronger real wage growth. So has this trend … Continue reading
The United States will need nearly 250,000 more engineers over the next 10 years to work in high-growth sectors and industries such as oil and gas, aerospace, and renewable energy, with employers to make more than a third of new engineering jobs available in metropolitan areas such as Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. That … Continue reading
With the exception of Vermont, which had an unemployment rate of 3.5% in June, the states with extraordinary jobless figures are in the Great Plains, where an energy boom has helped the economy. Shale-rich North Dakota had a jobless rate of a mere 2.7% in June. Following it were Nebraska at 3.5%, Utah at 3.5% … Continue reading
The report Baccalaureate and Beyond:A First Look at the Employment Experiences and Lives of College Graduates, 4 Years On published by the National Center for Education Statistics, the Institute of Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education presents initial findings about the employment outcomes of bachelor’s degree recipients approximately 4 years after they completed their … Continue reading
Since the final quarter of 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from 65.9 percent to 62.8 percent in the second quarter of 2014, a decline of 3.1 percentage points. In this report, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that this 3.1 percentage point decline can be attributed to three main sources: About half … Continue reading
More than one in three Americans (35%) say now is a good time to find a quality job. While not high on an absolute basis, this percentage is the highest since December 2007, the starting point of the Great Recession. The jobs measure has been improving in the past few months, and increased seven percentage … Continue reading
According to official statistics, the unemployment rate of young military veterans ages 18-24 reached 29 percent in 2011. Five facts about veteran unemployment: The unemployment rate of veterans ages 18–65 is higher than the unemployment rate of similarly situated non-veterans. In the CPS, the difference between veteran and non-veteran youth (ages 18–24) unem- ployment increased … Continue reading
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA In the week ending July 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 302,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 1,000 from 304,000 to 305,000. The 4-week moving average was 309,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous … Continue reading