Trying to help 24 million people by imperiling 78 million people’s lives is a very poor policy. We’ve heard similar stories before: In a few short decades, climate policy has often created more damage than the benefits it attempts to deliver. Ten years ago, a biofuels craze swept rich countries with the full-throated support of […]
The current employment boom should be a moment of opportunity for Job Corps: Companies report 6.7 million jobs unfilled because of the shortage of skilled workers, even as millions of inner-city and rural youths languish in poverty or dead-end jobs. Superficially, the system seems successful. Centers report that, on average, 87 percent of graduates at […]
AEND Industries Inc. plans to move its HQ from Huntington Beach, Calif., to Hutto in 2019. The company manufactures wheels for skateboards, long boards, scooters, wheelchairs, derby cars and other vehicles. It wants to build a 19,200-square-foot facility at North Town Commons Business Park, near the intersection of FM 1660 North and Limmer Loop. AEND […]
Three customers sat on Bottle & Barlow’s patio Wednesday afternoon, sipping cocktails and soaking up the last bits of summer sun. That was a crowd compared to the scene inside, where owner Anthony Giannotti was the only person left to cut hair. Giannotti’s entire seven-person staff of independent contractors quit rather be reclassified as employees, […]
Small business plans to create new jobs and job openings hit a 45-year high in August, but owners still struggled to fill their open positions, according to NFIB’s monthly jobs report, released today. After posting significant gains in filling open positions in July, it slowed slightly in August, perhaps due to fewer qualified applicants. Hiring […]
American factory activity in August expanded at the strongest pace in more than 14 years, despite rising tensions with some of the U.S.’s largest trade partners. The Institute for Supply Management on Tuesday said its manufacturing index rose to 61.3 in August, the highest level since May 2004, from 58.1 in July. Sales of factory-made […]
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2018 is 4.7 percent on September 4, up from 4.1 percent on August 30. The nowcasts of third-quarter real consumer spending growth and third-quarter real private fixed investment growth increased from 3.0 percent and 3.0 percent, respectively, to […]
U.S. worker productivity rose this spring at the best quarterly pace in more than three years, newly revised numbers confirmed, though growth from a year earlier was more subdued. The productivity of nonfarm workers, measured as the output of goods and services for each hour on the job, increased at an annualized and seasonally adjusted […]
A robust economy drove U.S. wages higher in August, new evidence that workers are gaining bargaining power with their employers as the nation’s pool of available labor becomes tighter in an expansion that appears to have gained steam in 2018. The Labor Department reported Friday that worker payrolls expanded by 201,000 in August and private-sector […]
Jensen says the county first detected this particular fruit fly in late July through routine trap monitoring. The pest’s presence has now triggered a quarantine by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It extends over an area of 123 square miles, covering a swathe of the city of Sacramento and a sliver of Yolo […]
Citing a lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms, state lawmakers on Thursday sent the governor a bill that would require women to be included on the boards of directors of firms headquartered in California. The bill would require that publicly held corporations headquartered in the state include at least one woman on boards of directors […]
General Motors Co.’s plans to ramp up electric-vehicle production in China were set back after the auto maker determined the Chinese-made batteries it intended to use failed to meet its own performance and safety standards during testing. GM was set to enter production next month on its plug-in hybrid Buick Velite 6, a local variant […]
U.S. construction companies are grappling with a widespread labor shortage that is exacerbating the cost of housing and other buildings, according to a new survey. Eighty percent of the 2,552 U.S. construction companies surveyed said they are having difficulty hiring construction workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America and Autodesk, an engineering software […]
First, the evidence that something is changing. Last year more Americans left the county of San Francisco than arrived. According to a recent survey, 46% of respondents say they plan to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, up from 34% in 2016. So many startups are branching out into new places that […]
The rules that determine who can legally work in an occupation and provide particular services—known as occupational licensure—affect a wide swath of workers and are important constraints on how the labor market and economy function. Despite a welcome increase in discussions of occupational licensing in recent years, and a body of research dating back decades, […]