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“Sales at retail stores, online retailers and restaurants rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% in September from the prior month, matching economists’ expectations for a rebound after sales fell 0.2% in August, the Commerce Department reported Friday. Stronger auto sales and rising gasoline prices boosted the headline figure last month, and spending excluding gas and autos rose a more modest 0.3%, though that was still the best gain in three months.”

Here is the lesson: What some economists now call “secular stagnation” might better be termed “ordinary performance.” Most of the time, in most economies, incomes increase slowly, and living standards rise bit by bit. The extraordinary experience of the Golden Age left us with the unfortunate legacy of unrealistic expectations about our governments’ ability to deliver jobs, pay raises and steady growth.

In the capital of the potato state, lawmakers have a power that few of their peers enjoy: They can review, and reject, new regulations coming out of executive-branch agencies. This has saved Idahoans from a slew of laughable and business-unfriendly restrictions.

Weekly applications for unemployment benefits were unchanged at a seasonally adjusted 246,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell 3,500 to 249,250.

They find the number of people earning at least $1,000 a year on personal businesses in the taxi, limousine and ground transportation industry has skyrocketed to 346,000  in 2014 (the latest available data) from 197,000 in 2009. The numbers seem to align with what the companies themselves have revealed: Uber, for example, was founded in 2009 and had 160,000 drivers by the end of 2014.

Employment in Southern California’s so-called “gig economy” – workers who drive for Uber or Lyft, or run errands for the app Task Rabbit, for example – more than doubled between 2012 and 2014.

Germany already lays claim to the dubious distinction of having some of Europe’s highest electricity prices, but its households will be forking over even more next year as they shoulder the costs of the country’s renewables-at-any-price energy policy, better known as the energiewende.

Platform-based freelancing is not yet substantially displacing payroll employment—but that could change. Despite the uptick in nonemployer contractors, payroll employment in “rides and rooms” industries has not declined during the last five years. Instead, payroll employment has increased in these industries, particularly in the passenger ground transit sectors.

Verizon said the workers – approximately 700 in customer service and 300 in telesales – will be offered the opportunity to relocate to other customer service call and telesales centers outside of California.

U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions totaled 2,530 million metric tons in the first six months of 2016. This was the lowest emissions level for the first six months of the year since 1991, as mild weather and changes in the fuels used to generate electricity contributed to the decline in energy-related emissions. EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook projects that energy-associated CO2 emissions will fall to 5,179 million metric tons in 2016, the lowest annual level since 1992.

Climate change increasingly marks a distinct dividing line. Manufacturing, moving goods, industrial scale agriculture, fossil fuel energy all consume resources in ways many progressives see as harming the planet. Progressives threaten these industries with increasingly draconian schemes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Gone are the days of supporting moderate shifts — which could work with some Heartland economies — from coal to gas and improving mileage efficiency.

The labor market was showing few signs of acceleration and few signs of deterioration in August, according to the Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as Jolts. . . The drop can be largely attributed to a decline in openings for professional and business services, which saw the number of available jobs fall by 223,000 to 989,000.

“The technology revolution has delivered Google searches, Facebook friends, iPhone apps, Twitter rants and shopping for almost anything on Amazon, all in the past decade and a half. What it hasn’t delivered are many jobs. Google’s Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. had at the end of last year a total of 74,505 employees, about one-third fewer than Microsoft Corp. even though their combined stock-market value is twice as big. Photo-sharing service Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired for $1 billion by Facebook in 2012.”

Estimates suggest the new normal for U.S. GDP growth has dropped to between 1½ and 1¾%, noticeably slower than the typical postwar pace. The slowdown stems mainly from demographics and educational attainment. As baby boomers retire, employment growth shrinks. And educational attainment of the workforce has plateaued, reducing its contribution to productivity growth through labor quality. The GDP growth forecast assumes that, apart from these effects, the modest productivity growth is relatively “normal”—in line with its pace for most of the period since 1973.

The L.A. City Council voted unanimously to approve Paramount’s master plan, paving the way for the studio to add about 1.4 million square feet of space to its iconic headquarters on Melrose Avenue. The expansion was first announced in 2011 and is expected to cost the studio $700 million.