Unemployment

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on "mass layoffs" yesterday. It also included annual totals and an eleven-year chart of mass layoff history. A "mass layoff action" involves "at least 50 persons from a single establishment." Since 1988, employers have been required to give 60 days notice of "covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs." The BLS Mass Layoffs…

An unbylined report on unemployment claims by the Associated Press is a classic of the genre (bold is mine): The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for jobless claims dropped by 26,000 to 299,000 last week on a seasonally adjusted basis. It marked the first time jobless claims have fallen below 300,000 since the week of July 22. The improvement was much better than the decline…

Today's announcement there were 167,000 net new jobs in December (196,000 counting revisions to prior months), and that the unemployment rate held steady at 4.5%, made me wonder how job growth during the Bush prosperity compares to job growth during comparable periods in the 1990s. The answer -- Pretty darn well:

A rather extraordinary conclusion was reached by members of the panel on Sunday’s “The Chris Matthews Show” – the economy is strong. What makes this so earth shattering? Well, because the host prior to the elections – which, by the way, were only about seven weeks ago – regularly talked about how badly the economy was doing, and didn’t challenge those espousing similarly bearish viewpoints. Yet,…

The Boston Globe can't put two and two together on immigration. Just last week it wrung its editorial hands over the fact that illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from. But naturally it didn't make the logical connection and call for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Then today, the paper lends its pages to a union official who, when it comes to illegals, sees only employers, with nary…

This was just too delicious for words…but I’ll try. As many of you are aware, most conservatives who study the economy and the markets view the New York Times’ Paul Krugman as being one of the most disingenuous pols on the landscape. Krugman has regularly been shown to flat out lie about economic data in his articles to prove his specious points, and was accused by the Times’ former ombudsman…

For journalists, the answer depends on whether they are covering the shopping season or company layoffs.______________________ Last year, I sensed that journalists in general prefer to call this time of the year in commerce that of "holiday shopping" instead of "Christmas shopping," but that when it came to people losing their jobs, they preferred to describe layoffs as relating to "Christmas…

Just four days before the election, the network news shows downplayed reports of a major drop in the unemployment rate and the creation of 231,000 new jobs. CBS’s Katie Couric groused, “But do the jobs out there pay enough?” NBC’s Brian Williams declared, “That was below expectations,” and ABC’s Charles Gibson gave the issue a total of 15 seconds.That wasn’t the way the networks handled bad news…