New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that prices for consumer goods have risen significantly in the past year, putting extra strain on Americans’ budgets and worrying experts.
As the Biden administration fends off criticism over proposed tax increases, higher spending and rising inflation, BLS released data Wednesday showing the biggest increase in consumer prices in over a decade. Those price increases point to a spike in inflation, experts say.
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The U.S. economy reported an increase of 266,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 6.1%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.
Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 266,000 in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, and the number of unemployed persons ticked up to 9.8 million. Economists projected a million Americans would be added to payrolls prior to Friday’s report, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The pieces are really coming together for a burst in activity,” Sarah House, senior economist for Wells Fargo’s Corporate and Investment Bank, told the WSJ. “We’re expecting to see the labor market recovery shift into an even faster gear with the April jobs report.”
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Virginia is trailing the rest of the United States in processing certain unemployment claims. That’s led to a class-action lawsuit against the Virginia Employment Commission (VEC), filed in April. VEC Commissioner Ellen Hess asked for an extension until the end of May to respond to the lawsuit, but on Wednesday, a district judge ruled that the VEC could only have a four-day extension from May 7 until May 11.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 553,000 last week as the economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending April 17, when 566,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 547,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims increased to 719,000 last week, even as the economy continues to slowly recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented an increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending March 20, when 658,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised down from the 684,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
Roughly 18.2 million Americans continue to collect unemployment benefits, according to the report.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims increased to 770,000 last week as the economy continued to suffer the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented an increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending March 6, when 725,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 712,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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The U.S. economy reported an increase of 379,000 jobs in February while the unemployment rate fell to 6.2%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.
Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 379,000 in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, and the number of unemployed persons fell slightly to 10 million. Economists projected 210,000 Americans to be added to payrolls and the unemployment rate to increase to hold at 6.3% prior to Friday’s report, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims increased slightly to 745,000 last week as the economy continued to suffer the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented an increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending Feb. 20, in which there were 736,000 new jobless claims reported. That number was revised up from the 730,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is reportedly making a push to be nominated as labor secretary in a potential Joe Biden administration, sources told Politico.
Sanders is interested in having a position in Democratic presidential nominee Biden’s potential cabinet, an unnamed person close to the Vermont senator told Politico Thursday evening. Sanders, who was former Vice President Biden’s main rival during the 2020 Democratic primaries, has specifically expressed interest in leading the Department of Labor, according to the source.
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About 1.5 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, evidence that many Americans are still losing their jobs even as the economy appears to be slowly recovering with more businesses partially reopening.
The latest figure from the Labor Department marked the 10th straight weekly decline in applications for jobless aid since they peaked in mid-March when the coronavirus hit hard. Still, the pace of layoffs remains historically high.
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Texas governor Greg Abbott said he plans to issue an executive order next week to reopen businesses in Texas, although he didn’t offer specific details.
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Unemployment claims in Tennessee and nationwide continue to skyrocket because of the Chinese COVID-19 shutdown of businesses.
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Dozens of student government executives wrote a letter recently urging the Department of Labor to block a merger between two giants of the textbook industry. In May, McGraw-Hill and Cengage announced they would be pursuing a merger. As two of the five major textbook publishers that currently have 80 percent of the market, this merger would form the second-largest textbook publisher in the US.
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by Tim Pearce The Department of Labor proposed a rule Thursday that would expand guaranteed overtime pay laws to roughly 1.1 million workers. The rule would raise the threshold of overtime pay protection from workers making under $23,660 a year to workers making $35,308 a year, regardless of whether they are paid a salary or by the hour, Politico reported. Former President Barack Obama’s administration proposed an earlier version of the rule in 2016 that would have covered most employees making under $47,476 a year. A federal judge in Texas suspended the rule before it took effect and later killed it. The judge ruled the president did not have the authority for such a drastic change, according to The New York Times. The Trump administration’s proposal is more moderate and largely in line with suggestions from business leaders and interest groups. Worker advocates pushed for a new rule more similar to the Obama-era proposal, which included a provision that the threshold would automatically rise with inflation. Trump’s Labor Department dropped the inflation attachment of the new proposal, replacing it with a provision that would allow the department to reassess the threshold every four years and adjust the level as…
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President Trump’s concept to merge the U.S. Department of Education with the Department of Labor lacks significant details and will be difficult to maneuver through a deeply divided Congress.
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Tennessee’s unemployment rates remain low and the state added 45,000 jobs the past year, the National Federation of Independent Business said. According to the March 2018 numbers from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, 82 of the state’s 95 counties saw lower unemployment rates that month than they did in February, NFIB said. The lowest rate, 2.5 percent, was in Williamson County; the highest, 5.8 percent, was in Houston and Bledsoe counties, although that rate was a decrease for both counties from the prior month. Between April 2017 and April 2018, Tennessee added approximately 45,000 new jobs, with the biggest swells occurring in the leisure/hospitality, professional/business services, and education/health services sectors. “It doesn’t seem that long ago that several Tennessee counties had unemployment rates in the high teens, so the continuing trend of low unemployment rates across the state is wonderful news,” NFIB/TN State Director Jim Brown said. The good news continued in April as well. In mid-May, Gov. Bill Haslam and Department of Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner Burns Phillips announced that the statewide unemployment rate in April was 3.4 percent, representing the third consecutive month this number had held steady. April 2018 marked one year since…
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By Printus LeBlanc As many have noticed the Obama administration was very much in favor of regulations for the sake of regulations. The administration tried to regulate everything from the air in our lungs and food in our stomach, to the climate controlled by the Sun. But earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck another blow against the abusive administrative state imposed on the American People by the previous administration and returned some sanity to the U.S. Spurred on by the financial crisis the Department of Labor (DOL) attempted to regulate the part of the financial industry by proposing a rule in 2010. The department already had authority over employer-sponsored retirement plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The authority did not include Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA), which are already regulated by the IRS and SEC. The backlash caused the administration to withdraw the rule and try again five years later. In 2015, President Obama warned the financial industry change was coming, and in April of 2016, the new rule came down under DOL. The new rule was designed to get away from the commission-based system financial services industry. The then Assistant Secretary…
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With Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta at the helm, the Department of Labor (DOL) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have made significant progress to reverse some of the prior administration’s more damaging, anti-business regulatory decisions.
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