Historically low unemployment is forcing headway on an issue that has been around since women entered the workforce: child care. Businesses increasingly see it as an issue vital to their operations and communities, and policy makers from New Hampshire to Michigan to Colorado have identified it as key to freeing up workers to fill stubborn […]
As housing prices recover from the Great Recession, municipalities across America are considering laws that will raise the cost of homeownership. The Wall Street Journal reports that cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta are requiring developers to set aside some portion of their new units to sell or rent at below-market prices to low-income households. […]
There is a world-wide race to lock up the supply chain for cobalt, which will likely be in even greater demand as electric-car production rises. So far, China is way ahead. Chinese imports of cobalt from Congo, the world’s biggest producer of cobalt, totaled $1.2 billion in the first nine months of 2017, compared with […]
U.S. producer prices rose in January, the latest sign of building inflation pressure in the economy. The producer-price index, a measure of the prices businesses charge for their goods and services, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.4% in January from a month earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday. From a year earlier, producer prices advanced 2.7% […]
The consumer-price index, which measures what Americans pay for everything from salad dressing to fares on public transportation, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in January, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called core prices rose 0.3%. That was above economists’ expectations for a 0.4% rise in consumer prices, and […]
When Los Angeles imposed a new trash-collection program last summer, supporters said the public would benefit from reduced landfill waste and greenhouse gas emissions and improved worker safety. Six months later, RecycLA has clearly benefitted the green and labor special interests that backed it, but for much of L.A. the experiment has been a dumpster […]
The U.S. homeownership rate rose in 2017 for the first time in 13 years, driven by young buyers who overcame rising prices, tight supply and strict lending conditions to purchase their first homes. The annual increase marks a crucial turning point because it comes after the federal government reined in bubble-era policies that encouraged banks […]
U.S. worker productivity grew below its long-run average for the seventh straight year in 2017.
A tightening labor market might finally be producing pay raises for American workers, delivering one of the key missing ingredients in the expansion.
Though the labor market has grown robustly nationwide this year, progress has been uneven across blue states and red states. An increasing number of people in red states have stopped looking for work, while a larger share of people in blue states are actively in the workforce.
A senior White House official said Sunday that the Trump administration’s push for an infrastructure rebuilding plan will begin in earnest early next month, and that the president has invited GOP congressional leaders to Camp David to nail down their agenda for 2018.
Wildfires continue to ravage California, and the bravery of firefighters trying to prevent damage to homes and property has been inspiring. But this being 2017 in America, the state’s progressive politicians are blaming the fires on humanity’s sins of carbon emission. To the contrary, the conflagrations should be a wake-up call to regulators and politicians who have emphasized acts of climate piety over fire prevention.
When the authors of the Affordable Care Act promised to “bend the cost curve” in health care, it was typical Washington doublespeak. Voters likely heard those words as a promise that costs would go down, but the intended meaning was merely that they would rise more slowly than before. Yet even by that meager standard, ObamaCare is a failure. Costs are rising faster than before, and there’s no real prospect of a reversal. The key provisions of the law that were supposed to produce savings and efficiencies either haven’t worked or will never be implemented. ObamaCare’s Failed Cost Controls Photo: iStock/Getty Images America’s health-care spending rose 4.3% in 2016, according to federal data released earlier this month. That is the third straight year it outpaced economic growth. Total health spending last year was 17.9% of gross domestic product, up from 17.2% in 2013.
Congress passed the most sweeping tax reform since 1986 on Wednesday, and with any luck that success for the country will trigger a new reform debate in many states. To wit, how much will they have to cut income-tax rates to retain and attract the high-income earners who finance so much of their state budgets? You can figure out who most needs reform by the decibels of protest. Amid other apocalyptic warnings, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last weekend declared that the GOP bill’s limit on the state-and-local tax deduction will trigger “an economic civil war” between high- and low-tax states. California Governor Jerry Brown has likened Republicans to “mafia thugs” while Mr. Cuomo calls the bill a “dagger at the economic heart of New York.” By heart, he apparently means the state’s top earners who pay for Albany’s ever-higher spending.
U.S. housing starts rose last month to the highest level in more than a year, driven by gains in single-family home building in the South and West.