Today, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate tracked up in 26 states and the District of Columbia between July and August. Maryland and Florida saw statistically significant increases of 0.2 percent, with slight changes in 25 other states.
Yesterday, the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — the team of economists that determines whether the economy is contracting (in a recession) or expanding — announced that the recession officially ended in June 2009.
That means little to the 14.9 million Americans out of work, of More…
Today, the Census Bureau announced that one in seven Americans lived in poverty last year. Reporting income and poverty statistics for 2009, the Bureau said median income did not change substantially, remaining around $49,800. But the poverty rate climbed to 14.3 from 13.2 percent. That means that during 2009, More…
Companies are back to profitability — in part because of the massive layoffs of the past two years. But they are not back to hiring yet, instead holding onto cash and waiting for a stronger recovery, Jia Lynn Yang writes in today’s Washington Post:
Nonfinancial companies are sitting on
This morning, the Department of Labor announced that weekly initial jobless claims rose 12,000, to 472,000. Last week’s claims were revised upward, from 456,000 to 460,000. The claims were higher than economists’ estimates of around 456,000. Bloomberg notes:
Claims around 450,000 are consistent with private companies adding
Today, a poll from Gallup shows where the uptick in consumer spending is coming from: the wealthy, and the wealthy only. Americans earning more than $90,000 a year spent an average of $145 a day in May, a third more than in April and the largest amount since November More…
This morning, the Department of Labor announced that weekly initial jobless claims remained high, at 456,000. That is a decline of 3,000 from last week’s claim, upwardly revised to 459,000. The four-week average ticked up to 463,000. Economists had expected initial claims to fall to 450,000. I’ll repeat More…
The good news: Initial jobless benefit claims declined last week, to 453,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to come in at 455,000. The bad news: The number remains very high, the Labor Department revised its estimate for the previous week upward and the four-week average increased by 1,750 More…
House Democratic leaders just started a series of procedural votes leading up to what they hope will be passage of sweeping legislation extending a number of expiring tax breaks and unemployment insurance benefits.
To appease budget hawks in their own party, however, they’ve made a number of changes. Most significantly: More…
After hitting a wall of moderate Democrats wary of more deficit spending, House leaders on Wednesday scaled back their sweeping proposal to extend certain tax breaks and emergency unemployment benefits.
While most of the roughly $50 billion savings under the amended bill comes from More…
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