It’s graduation season! And according to sources from both the White House and the Fed, the current unemployment rate of only 5.5 percent signals a wealth of opportunity for grads. Furthermore, the unemployment rate has been consistently declining. This means that all of us in Class of 2015 should breathe easy; the time has come … Continue reading
Tag Archives: jobs
The Myth of the Underpaid Minimum Wage Worker
One of greatest falsehoods that clouds the discussion over whether to raise the minimum wage is that these workers are underpaid compared to the value they provide to their employers. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the case, “If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are … Continue reading
The Problem With Wellness Initiatives
In an attempt to decrease health care costs, wellness initiatives have become increasingly popular programs offered by corporations. Health and wellness is an extremely important issue and when it comes to health care reform there should to be a larger personal responsibility component. Unhealthy lifestyles, such as inactivity, poor nutrition, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol … Continue reading
How Vermont’s Single Payer Proposal Can Backfire
American health care reform is a three-headed beast. Attempts at reform typically seek to resolve issues regarding access, quality care, and cost control. The ACA, one of the largest overhauls of American healthcare is aimed at improving access—but the problem becomes what good is increasing access to expensive and low quality care? Vermont’s leaders have … Continue reading
The Dark Cloud Over the Medical Device Tax
The medical device industry currently consists of 8,000+ manufacturers and employs over 400,000 Americans. Over the last seven months, the industry has been subjected to a 2.3% excise tax on all medical device sales – not only profits. The tax has been a primary funding mechanism for the health care overhaul so far. The medical device industry … Continue reading
The New Part-Time Economy
The US economy has been showing signs of recovery in the last year, adding 195,000 jobs in June alone, as the labor market advanced despite huge federal spending cuts and tax increases. This may sound nice at first, but the underlying truth to various “recovery” statistics is that the majority of new jobs added are … Continue reading
March Jobs Report: Unemployment Falls as Job Seekers Give Up
February’s job report looked so promising. Unemployment was down by .2% and 236,000 jobs were added to the economy. The economic outlook was great. Then the jobs report for March came out. What happened? In a blog post I wrote last month I predicted that the promising economic outlook was premature and that March’s report … Continue reading
Promising Unemployment Numbers May be Premature
On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the unemployment report for February. 236,000 jobs were created and unemployment fell to 7.7% (a .2% decrease from January). This is good news for the slowly recovering economy … we think. One aspect that contributed to the lower unemployment rate was a rise in discouraged workers. These … Continue reading
Natural Resource Potential in North America
On Tuesday February 5th, the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee began a series of congressional hearings called “American Energy and Security and Innovation.” This particular hearing was a discussion over the natural resources available in North America. There is a wide spread perception that our nation’s resources are scarce to say the least, however technological … Continue reading
A Comparison: Reagan, Obama & Jobs
A myriad of articles have been written on how the presidential election of 2012 should garner a stringent comparison to that of the 1980 presidential election. I agree. During both presidential elections the United States economy was and is hurting. But, the focus of this article is: how did the presidents perform after they won … Continue reading
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