Economists point to a crucial question: Will a higher minimum wage reduce the number of jobs for the country’s least skilled workers? President Obama says “there is no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage costs jobs.” On the contrary, a full and fair reading of the evidence shows the opposite. Raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, particularly those held by the least-skilled.
In the second quarter, the U.S.’s hottest growth areas traveled toward the coasts where service-oriented sectors like finance and professional services dominate, away from the mining-focused heartland.
The U.S. trade deficit widened in October as exports resumed a steady decline, the latest sign a slumping global economy is draining foreigners’ appetite for American-made goods.
Average hourly earnings advanced 2.3% from a year earlier in November, the Labor Department said Friday, a pace that’s roughly been maintained over the past two years. That streak of steady wage gains has coincided with the economy adding an average of 234,000 jobs per month since November 2013, a clear acceleration compared with earlier in the expansion.
The U.S. economy has added 2.6 million jobs over the prior 12 months. That is down from a high of 3.2 million registered in February, and the lowest 12-month total since May 2014.
U.S. business investment advanced just 2.2% from a year earlier in the third quarter, a slowdown that marks one of the worse performances of the six-year-old economic expansion. The trend seems at odds with ultralow interest rates, consistent hiring and steady, if unspectacular, overall economic growth.
Companies appear reluctant to step up spending on the basic building blocks of the economy, such as machines, computers and new buildings. The broadest measure of U.S. business investment advanced 2.2% from a year earlier in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said last week, marking one of the worse performances of the six-year-old economic expansion.
White House economic advisers have produced a steady diet of white papers this year to spotlight the puzzle of sluggish productivity, which economists want a better handle on because it helps explain why incomes for the broad middle class aren’t rising. Their latest target: land-use restrictions.
The number of jobs created by new businesses fell 7% in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of 2014 on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said this week. From a decade ago, the figure is down 18%.
More than a quarter of U.S. workers are now employed in a field licensed at the state level, according to a recent White House study. And regulators continue to add to the roster of more than 1,100 occupations that require a license to operate in at least one state.
The Obama administration’s belief that it can mandate its way to economic growth—and its imposition of new regulatory costs that eclipse any in recent history—is holding back job creation and America’s national recovery. The overtime mandate is more of the same.
The challenge for employers is not only the cost of higher wages or paid sick time. Multistate employers compelled to monitor new developments in thousands of cities instead of 50 states find the task overwhelming. Employers also have to track where each of their employees lives, or moves to, and works. Complying with the three-tiered patchwork of federal, state and local regulation means more opportunity for contradiction, as some laws’ requirements are the opposite of other laws. Changing a national payroll system to comply with the paid sick-leave ordinance in Passaic, N.J., might violate the law in San Francisco.
American consumers edged up their spending in September at the slowest pace since January, suggesting slowing job creation and economic turmoil overseas may be introducing some caution into purchasing habits. . . Personal income, reflecting Americans’ pretax earnings from salaries and investments, climbed 0.1% in September. That was the smallest increase since March.
U. S. economic growth cooled in the third quarter as firms let inventories dwindle and the pace of spending on the part of consumers, businesses and governments all decelerated.
A series of startups are vying to become an “Uber of trucking,” leveraging truck drivers’ smartphones to quickly connect them with nearby companies looking to ship goods. The upstarts aim to reinvent a fragmented U.S. trucking industry that has long relied on third-party brokers, essentially travel agents for trucking who connect truckers with customers.