... Tuesday, vice president Joe Biden offered his latest progress report on the stimulus package passed earlier this year. In a memo for the president, Mr. Biden said the clean-energy part of the stimulus plan—some $80 billion out of the $787 billion total—could help create more than 700,000 jobs [...]
I urge everyone to Go Read Garth. And then you will understand that Economics is The Science of Supporting the Status Quo and Stifling Innovation, as Steve Jobs (h/t Patrick) noted several days ago.
[...] 
State transportation officials say Monday was a good day for crews working to remove a huge rock slide from Interstate 40, and the job of hauling rocks away from the site could begin today or Wednesday.
But there is still no change in the longterm forecast of when [...]
What defined business in 2009? Bankers and bailouts, for one. The proliferation of social media. A radical shift in the ways we find and accept jobs. A redefinition of the real estate, credit, and media markets.
In a word, 2009 was full of fluctuations. And nobody covered, commented [...]
For students wondering where the depression-resistant, high-paying jobs are, the USA Today reports that the percentage of federal government workers making over $100,000 per year increased from 15% to 19% during the current downturn's first year and a half.
"The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal" [...]
I came across this video interview of economist Sandy Ikeda by the Mackinac Center. Sandy currently blogs at thinkmarkets and has contributed guest posts to Market Urbanism. I thought Sandy did a great job discussing many of the topics we cover in this site. Sandy is particularly [...]
December 11, 2009
By John Mauldin
We are clearly starting to get some better data points here and there. But as I pointed out [...]
The collectif antilibérale makes the excellent point that there is no problem with the appointments to the new jobs created by the Lisbon treaty. Two things will control their in-trays, after all - the first is the job of getting a major new institution, the EU external action service, [...]
What House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer should be saying:
Because of the uniquely high unemployment rate, the benefits to government spending are much greater than usual--not only does it deliver needed services and build necessary infrastructure, but it puts people who otherwise would be jobless and broke to work. Because [...]
He writes, among other things:
Is The Administration's Economic Thinking Incoherent?: Brad DeLong parses my piece today on the administration's struggle to create jobs while still minding the deficit and pronounces himself "increasingly bewildered about administration thinking."...
Now, obviously, not every member of the administration and every Democrat [...]
Macro Advisors has just upped their tracking estimate of seasonally-adjusted fourth-quarter real GDP growth to a 4.2% annual rate. We know that the fourth-quarter labor input growth rate will be about -1.0%. That means another high--5.0%-labor productivity growth rate quarter.
If productivity growth continues at 5% for a while, we would [...]
Question: Do you generally approve or disapprove of the job that each of the following groups or people are doing in handling the economy?
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Answer:
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Source:
HART/McINTURFF Study #9747
December 2009 CNBC Survey
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/_News/__EDIT%20Englewood%20Cliffs/Toplines_Winter09.pdf
Some jobs, anyone can do. And some jobs need to be a personality fit. For example, you probably shouldn’t be an atheist if you apply for a church musician gig. You shouldn’t be a manipulative type if you’re interested in hypnotism. And if you want to sell [...]
The real unemployment rate--the share of Americans who say that they are actively looking for work and don't have jobs--has been drifting down since late spring--from 9.7% in June to 9.4% in November. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate over that same period has risen from 9.5% to 10.0%, as the actual' [...]
On Tuesday, President Obama unveiled a plan to use repaid TARP monies to fund a job creation program. The question is, can the government actually create jobs?
Initially, one would say yes. If the government hires more workers, this is job creation. If the government hires more contractors, this is [...]
Geez, Thursday already? Where did the week go ?
Here is what caught my eye today
• Will the real Santa Claus Rally please stand up? (MarketWatch)
• Why Didn’t Canada’s Housing Market Go Bust? (Cleveland Fed)
Noam Scheiber reports from inside the Obama Administration:
Balancing The Budget: As of late this summer, Democrats in Washington shared a tidy consensus about the economy: The stimulus was working more or less on schedule, and the job market was gradually recovering. That meant the administration could start thinking [...]
If that's your regular job, you already know that today is a tax day.
No, you're not paying anything; just reporting income so you can pay taxes on it later.
When you make at least $20 in tips [...]
Here's my favorite pair of charts from David Kochanek's latest hedge fund compensation report. The first shows how much people get paid, by job title:
and the next shows how happy they are, also by job title.
Quite the inverse relationship, it seems! The accounting [...]
THIS one is clear as a bell:
Americans Want Government to Spend for Jobs, Send Bill to Rich
Here are the [...]
Initial Jobless Claims totaled 474k, 19k above estimates and up from 457k last week. Continuing claims, which capture 26 weeks of benefit collection, were 293k below forecasts and down by 303k from last week BUT Emergency Unemployment Compensation that runs past this rose by 327k. Extended Benefits that go up [...]
The folks in the United States seem to have some clear ideas about what they like and dislike, want and don’t want.
Dislikes? Bankers, Bonuses, and Congressmen.
Wants? Public Works programs, Jobs.
Paying for all that? The Rich.
That’s the result of a pair of surveys out this week from Bloomberg. The numbers are [...]
Australia’s latest unemployment numbers seem now to suggest a levelling off of unemployment at or a bit below 6 percent, at least for the next few months. The unemployment rate in November dropped to 5.7%, with full time jobs rising by 31,000. Full time jobs are still down about 150,000 [...]
