The number of Americans claiming new unemployment benefits has never been so low for so long. Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs across the U.S., decreased by 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 233,000 in the week ended April 7, the Labor Department said Thursday. This means claims have now held below 300,000 for 162 […]
The Environmental Protection Agency moved to ease Obama-era vehicle emissions standards, siding with car makers who say the rules don’t work in an era of cheap gasoline, and setting up a fight with environmentalists and the state of California. The rules, finalized in the waning weeks of the Obama administration, would require auto makers to […]
Demand for low-skilled worker visas for the summer season starting Sunday is again far outstripping supply, with the Trump administration forced to choose between helping businesses seeking more visas or trying to save those jobs for American workers. Some lawmakers tried and failed this month to secure an increase in the number of H-2B visas […]
Families of more modest means are leaving expensive American urban areas and being replaced by more affluent newcomers, and the income gap between those arriving and leaving hot spots is widening. New research from Issi Romem, chief economist at building-data website BuildZoom, finds that metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and […]
It is a problem playing out in many parts of the Midwest, a region with lower unemployment and higher job-opening rates than the rest of the country. Employers, especially in more rural areas, are finding that there are just too few workers. That upends a long-running view in Washington, D.C., and many state capitals, where […]
The number of U.S. homeowners putting solar panels on their roofs declined last year after leading installers including Tesla Inc. abandoned aggressive sales practices that had helped drive breakneck growth. Residential solar had been on a tear, averaging 49% annual growth between 2010 and 2016, but the number of megawatts added last year dropped by […]
U.S. factories reported robust demand for their products in March but say rising prices for materials, tied to new tariffs, threaten to slow the industry’s expansion. The Institute for Supply Management said Monday its index of factory activity settled at 59.3 in March, down slightly from 60.8 the prior month. Any reading above 50 indicates […]
The U.S. trade position worsened in February, raising the stakes in the Trump administration’s intensifying effort to narrow the gap between what the U.S. imports and what it sells abroad. The trade deficit in goods and services rose to $57.6 billion in February, the Commerce Department said Thursday, the sixth straight monthly increase and the […]
Hiring slowed in March from February’s robust pace and the unemployment rate held at a 17-year low, consistent with a tight but not overheating labor market producing modest wage gains. U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 103,000 in March—the smallest gain in six months, the Labor Department said Friday. It was a pullback from […]
For the vast majority of young adults in Asia, the path to success clearly runs through education, work and marriage—in that order. Families, schools, media and society at large all reinforce that message. A similar path to success for young adults exists in America. Brookings scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill call it the “success […]
There is growing debate over the idea that governments should provide citizens with a safety net to cover life’s necessities. While still largely a non-starter in the U.S., universal basic income (UBI) — or guaranteed money from the government — has the backing of several tech-world luminaries, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson. […]
For every job opening in America, there’s now barely more than one unemployed person available to take it. The number of job openings in the U.S. has touched another record high while the number of Americans readily available to fill those roles trends lower, according to Labor Department data released Friday.
San Francisco is such a boomtown that people are leaving in droves. In 2016 and 2017, more people moved out of the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area—an urban core of 4.7 million people in a broader region known as the Bay Area—than moved into it from other parts of California or the U.S., according to U.S. […]
America is facing a new housing crisis. A decade after an epic construction binge, fewer homes are being built per household than at almost any time in U.S. history. Home construction per household a decade after the bust remains near the lowest level in 60 years of record-keeping, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of […]
Volkswagen has pulled into Tesla Inc.’s rearview mirror and vowed to overtake the electric-car pioneer with an extensive rollout of battery and hybrid models over the next five years, as well as new production facilities around the world. The German car maker—which is the largest world-wide, with sales of 10.7 million vehicles last year—said Tuesday […]