wages

4Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Jobs Are Up! Wages Are Up! So Why Is George The Economist So Gloomy?

In any other time, the jobs news that came down on Dec. 2, 2022, would be reason for cheer. The U.S. added 263,000 nonfarm jobs in November, leaving the unemployment rate at a low 3.7%. Moreover, wages are up – with average hourly pay jumping 5.1% compared with a year earlier. So why am I not celebrating? Oh, yes: inflation. The rosy employment figures come despite repeated efforts by the Federal Reserve to tame the job market and the wider economy in general in its fight against the worst inflation in decades. The Fed has now increased the base interest rate six times in 2022, going from a historic low of about zero to a range of 3.75% to 4% today. Another hike is expected on Dec. 13. Yet inflation remains stubbornly high, and currently sits at an annual rate of 7.7%. The economic rat...

Build Back Better Could Help End Subminimum Wages For People With Disabilities

Many people with disabilities are paid just pennies. Build Back Better could help end that. For almost a century, it has been completely legal for companies to pay workers with disabilities mere cents on the hour. Employees have reported receiving pennies in their paychecks, with no limit on how little they can be paid. This practice of paying “subminimum wage,” which the U.S. Department of Labor allows under the auspices of maintaining employment opportunities for people with disabilities, has also led to some workers being sequestered in workshops away from the regular workforce, where they have little opportunity to advance into other jobs. About 1,500 of those workshops remain nationwide, employing more than an estimated 100,000 people with disabilities at companies including Goodwill...

3 Takeaways From The Latest Jobs Report – Wages Up And Americans Are Encouraged Back To Work And Into The Office

Christopher Decker, University of Nebraska Omaha After a lackluster jobs report in September 2021, the latest news on employment gives Americans plenty of cheer about ahead of the holiday season. In total, 531,000 jobs were added in October – outstripping the already optimistic predictions of economists. This caused the unemployment rate to fall 0.2 percentage points to 4.6%. Even with those gains, the U.S. is still below pre-pandemic employment levels. But as an economist, I see details in the latest jobs report that suggest the workforce is emerging from 18 months of what has been the “new normal” and getting back to, well, the “normal normal.” Remote working in the rear-view mirror? Americans are returning to offices after a year-and-a-half of Zoom meetings and digital water cooler m...