During this presidential election cycle, economics and politics are inseparable. The fundamental question voters will have to decide upon when making their choice for President in a few short weeks is whether they believe that …
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” This quote, often attributed to Mark Twain, resonates with us for its pithy description of an irony we encounter everyday: In a world marked by rapid technological, …
There was more good news coming out of the housing market yesterday, with the Commerce Department announcing that new residential construction projects, called housing starts, increased by 15% in September compared to the prior
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When Vikram Pandit took over Citigroup in 2007, he was seen as an unlikely choice. In an industry dominated by white, glad-handing alpha males, Pandit is a bookish Indian immigrant known for his financial acumen but not his …
On Oct. 5, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the official unemployment rate had dropped from 8.1% to 7.8% — a surprisingly sharp decline given the slow pace of growth in the U.S. economy. The reaction from many on …
Walmart is the king of all retail, with revenues that are six times greater than its nearest competitor. Amazon has a comparable stranglehold on the e-commerce industry. And while it may have once seemed that each of these …
It’s an election season cliché to forewarn an ideological opponent that he is not entitled to his own facts. But when it comes to the economy, it would seem one is entitled to his own facts. Or to be more precise, that there …
The Government releases countless statistics each year, but few get more attention from the press than the official unemployment rate, which is updated and released once per month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). …
With the first presidential debate behind us, and the election just a month away, we have come upon that magical time of the year when the media filters each new datum through the lens of the election horse race. And so goes the …
New data give support to those who believe the U.S. economy is already contracting.
The Labor Department is constantly refining its estimation of the U.S. Labor Market as new data comes in. Each month, when it releases its employment situation report, it also issues revisions of the previous two months’ jobs …
Heading into the 20th century, America was a predominantly rural country. Roughly 40% of the nation’s labor force toiled on farms alongside 22 million work animals. One hundred years later, fewer than 2% of U.S. workers are …
