“Labor economics” on The Daily Caller

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people applying for unemployment benefits plunged last week to the lowest level in nearly three years, continuing a downward trend that suggests hiring could pick up this year. (more)

All of us tend to speak in terms of the American economy either creating or costing jobs. To an extent, speaking in those terms gets it backward — or at best neglects the reality that job creation or loss forms a vicious circle with that thing we call the economy. From the local tax revenues that pay for schools and basic services to the real estate market and every other significant element of the private economy, the driving force in the American economy is people working in productive jobs and getting paid for it. (more)

Late last week the House Republican Study Committee rolled out its political equivalent of Joan Rivers — something old that’s been “freshened up” many times. In this case, it’s the RSC’s list of spending cuts, which was unveiled with great fanfare despite containing nothing new of interest. What’s troubling is it indicates that some Republicans prefer to spend precious legislative time on their pet peeves instead of focusing on the nation’s top issue: jobs. (more)

Not since the early 1980s has the nation’s unemployment rate been so grim for so long, a government report due Friday is likely to show. (more)

Republicans in the House Thursday blocked a bill that would have extended jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed beyond the holiday season. (more)

Oregon payroll employment jumped by 7,600 jobs in October, seasonally adjusted, the biggest one-month increase in more than four years. (more)

Without additional government action to spur hiring, President Obama said Sunday that he fears the U.S. economy could enter a “new normal” in which corporate profits are high but the number of new jobs is too low to reduce the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate to pre-recession levels. (more)

This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics went to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides for their work on “search theory,” especially as applied to labor markets. The irony is that their award-winning work provides peer-reviewed justification for a commonsense solution to high unemployment. Continuous extensions of unemployment benefits have the paradoxical effect of paying people not to find work. (more)

New York City’s seasonably adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 9.3 percent in September, the lowest in 16 months, the state Labor Department said. (more)

The final employment report released prior to the midterm election shows that the economy shed 95,000 jobs in September, providing no relief to congressional Democrats hoping to hold on to their seats. (more)

The jobless rate in the U.S. is likely to approach 10 percent in coming months as the economy fails to grow enough to employ people rejoining the labor force, economists said. (more)

For most Americans, the Labor Day weekend will be a welcome reprieve from the nine-to-five grind. But for nearly 15 million Americans, today is little more than a sad reminder they are without a job. (more)

Jobless claims are again on the rise, returning last week to levels not seen since November 2009. Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate remains at a historically high 9.5%, and analysts foresee more layoffs as the economic recovery stalls. Many job seekers are desperate for the secret to beating out competition and landing those now-rare positions. The answer may be as simple as the old saying: location, location, location. (more)

While the global economic downturn continues to take its toll, a new United Nations agency report contends that young workers may have been hit the hardest, pointing to a dramatic rise in the number of unemployed youth around the world. While analysts list a host of reasons why young people can’t find jobs, there is one culprit, at least in the United States, that some economists say continues to rear its head: The federal minimum wage. (more)

Global youth unemployment has hit a record high following the financial crisis and is likely to get worse later this year, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Thursday. (more)

It’s no coincidence that Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, announced her retirement the day before Friday’s brutal unemployment report. With 131,000 more jobs lost in July, and downward revisions of 97,000 for the previous two months, it’s easy to see why she would start looking for the exits. (more)

With the American economic recovery hanging in the balance, private employers were unable to add enough jobs in July to overcome the departure of thousands of temporary Census workers as well as people laid off by cash-strapped state and local governments. (more)

CHICAGO — States are putting hundreds of thousands of people directly into jobs through programs reminiscent of the more ambitious work projects of the Great Depression. (more)

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell to 457,000 last week, a figure that signals the labor market will be slow to improve even as the economy grows. (more)

President Obama on Thursday signed a six-month extension of emergency jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, hours after the House approved the measure on a vote of 272 to 152. (more)