Jobs

American Job Openings Now Outnumber the Joble

The U.S. had more job openings this spring than unemployed Americans. For the first time since such record-keeping began in 2000, the number of available positions exceeded the number of job seekers, the Labor Department said Tuesday, a shift that is rippling across the economy and affecting the behavior of employers and workers. U.S. job openings rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.7 million at the end of April, a record high, and more than the 6.3 million Americans who were unemployed during the month. Openings had exceeded the available labor pool beginning in March, according to revised figures released Tuesday. The figures are the latest sign the U.S. is facing a historically tight labor market. The jobless rate ticked down further in May to a seasonally adjusted 3.8%, the lowest since April 2000, the Labor Department said last week. The last time the rate was lower was in 1969, when young men were being drafted into the Vietnam War. The labor market is forcing employers to rethink their approach to hiring, said Terri Greeno, owner of an Express Employment Professionals office in Crystal Lake, Ill. She is asking clients if they are being realistic in their demands for workers with clean criminal histories and higher levels of education. “Is it a health and safety issue? If not, you have to ask if those demands are really related to the outcome on the job,” Ms. Greeno said. “When the unemployment rate is this low, you’re really competing for workers who already have jobs.” Her staffing firm is taking extra steps to fill light industrial and office jobs, reaching out to 45,000 people it has placed in positions in the past 15 years and asking if friends or family would be willing to take on work. “This is a very tight labor market,” said Adam Kamins, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Most everyone who wants a job has one.” For workers, that’s good news. On the other hand, a tighter labor market presents several challenges to businesses. If they can’t find workers to meet the demand for their products, they can’t help the economy grow. They may instead opt to close the restaurant early or not run a third shift at the factory. Firms may need to pay more to attract workers, and some already are. That raises costs and would cut profit margins if higher prices can’t be passed on to customers. If prices are raised, that stokes stronger inflation, which already has been accelerating in recent months. Federal Reserve policy makers are watching closely. Emergence of worker shortages and stronger inflation could signal the economy is overheating, raising the need to lift interest rates more aggressively than the slow, moderate path they have signaled. For now, the market is opening up possibilities for those who have struggled in recent years. Geremy Mincey, 26 years old, had bounced between temporary jobs since dropping out of college seven years ago, working at factories, fast-food restaurants and even as the mall Easter Bunny. He would often go months between paychecks. Earlier this year, he landed a temporary job as a saw operator at Williams Metals and Welding Alloys in Birmingham, Ala. Last month, the firm asked him to take a full-time position with health benefits and retirement savings. “I feel like I broke the cycle,” he said.

More great economic news!!  For more, click on the text above.    🙂

Unemployment Rate Falls to 18-Year Low; Solid Hiring in May

The U.S. labor market was firing on all cylinders in May: the unemployment rate fell to an 18-year low, employers added jobs at a faster pace and wages modestly improved. The unemployment rate ticked down to a seasonally adjusted 3.8%, matching April 2000 as the lowest reading since 1969, the Labor Department said Friday. Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 223,000 in May, a jump from gains from March and April. Average hourly earnings ticked up to a 2.7% from a year earlier—and raises were even stronger for nonmanagers. “It’s pretty hard to argue that the labor market is anything but right in the sweet spot,” said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America. “There is tremendous demand for labor right now.” U.S. employers have added to payrolls for 92 straight months, extending the longest continuous jobs expansion on record. And those gains are extending to all corners of the labor market. The unemployment rate for women, 3.6% last month, was the lowest since 1953, when far smaller share of women sought jobs. The jobless rates for blacks, Latinos and those without high-school diplomas are trending near record lows. A tighter labor market should also produce better wage growth, but overall gains have remained modest. Average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers increased 8 cents last month to $26.92. Wages for nonsupervisor workers are rising at a faster rate than overall wage increases for the first time since 2014. The nonsupervisor increase, 2.8% in May from a year earlier, was the best annual gain since mid-2009, when the recession just ended. Still, in April 2000 wages for those workers rose 3.9% from a year earlier. “The tight labor market is putting employers under enormous pressure to invest as much as necessary to retain their best employees and attract the best talent,” said Rebecca Henderson, chief executive of employment firm Randstad Sourceright. The historically low unemployment rate and growing wages should keep Federal Reserve policy makers in line to raise the central bank’s benchmark interest rate at a meeting later this month. Consumer inflation has strengthened in recent months to reach the Fed’s 2% annual target, another factor likely keeping the central bank in line to gradually lift rates further in an effort to make sure the economy doesn’t overheat. One factor holding wage gains in check is the ability of employers in the past year to bring Americans who have been out of the labor market back into the workforce and dissuade existing employees from retiring or otherwise exiting. In May, the share of American adults working or looking for a job edged down to 62.7%, but the share with jobs ticked up to 60.4%. Labor-force participation is up slightly from a recent low in 2015, but still near the smallest share of adults participating since the late 1970s.

Great news in this Trump economy!!   🙂

These Chick-Fil-A workers will be making $18 per hour

The owner of a California Chick-Fil-A on Monday hiked some employee’s hourly wages to as much as $18 and is offering other benefits. According to KXTV, current employees working as “hospitality professionals” making $12.50 to $13 per hour will see a wage increase to $17 to $18 per hour. Also, all employees will get paid sick leave and supervisors will get paid time off. Eric Mason, the owner of the Chick-Fil-A in Sacramento told KXTV, “We’re looking for people trying to raise families, improve their lifestyle. The people (are) the real key component to successful businesses. We’re looking for people who are looking for long-term opportunity.”

95,745,000: Record Number Not in Labor Force as Boomers Retire

The number of employed Americans has broken eight records since President Trump took office, but on the not-so-sunny side, the number of Americans not in the labor force also keeps increasing, breaking six records since Trump took office in January 2017. Last month, a record 95,745,000 Americans were counted as “not in the labor force,” meaning they are not employed and are not seeking a job, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statics. “This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work,” BLS said. With record numbers of people not in the labor force, the labor force participation rate has remained stubbornly low in recent years. In April, only 62.8 percent of the non-institutionalized, civilian population over the age of 16 was either working or actively looking for work. This compares with an all-time high of 67.3 percent in the first four months of 2000. In a March 2018 report, the Congressional Budget Office noted that a lower labor force participation rate is associated with lower gross domestic product and lower tax revenues. It is also associated with larger federal outlays, because people who are not in the labor force are more likely to enroll in federal benefit programs, including Social Security. This past January, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the labor force participation rate will continue to decline over the next 30 years from the current 62.8 percent to 61.0 percent in 2027 and to 59.2 percent in 2047. According to that report, “The continued retirement of the baby-boom generation is the most important factor driving down the overall participation rate.” The first Baby Boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964 — turned 65 in 2011.

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Poll: Majority of Swing-Voters Oppose Importing More Foreign Workers

The majority of voters say they oppose allowing big businesses to import more foreign workers to compete against their fellow citizens for coveted blue-collar and white-collar jobs. In the latest poll by the Polling Company, a majority, 52 percent, of swing-voters said they wanted the 250,000 visas allotted to “chain migrants” — the foreign relatives of newly naturalized citizens — eliminated altogether rather than handed over to businesses to allow them to import an additional flood of foreign workers. Less than 25 percent of swing voters said they supported giving businesses the 250,000 annual visas to import foreign workers to compete for U.S. jobs. The majority of Americans said they opposed allowing business to import an additional 250,000 foreign workers every year, saying instead that overall immigration should be reduced, a plan that President Trump has touted to raise American workers’ wages. More than 70 percent of Republican voters said they supported reducing overall immigration levels — where the U.S. currently admits more than 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants every year — rather than giving the visas to businesses.

Agreed!!  We need to put and end to chain migration and other immigration loopholes.  And, of course, we need to BUILD THE WALL NOW!!!!

Here are the jobs with the fastest-growing & highest wages

Baristas enjoyed the biggest pay increases among U.S. employees over the past four years, according to a new report. Since 2014, their earnings have increased more than 20.6%, according to job search and review website Glassdoor’s local pay report. Over the past year, pay for these food services employees increased 2.9% to an average base pay of $24,400. Bank tellers also experienced robust wage growth over the past four years. Glassdoor found that these workers saw cumulative gains of 17.7% during that timeframe, while wages jumped 5.5% year-over-year to an average salary of $30,066. Growth in pay among cashiers has increased 16.5% since 2014, with the average salary rising to $27,923 as of April. Customer-service managers received an average pay increase of 16% over the past four years, with an average median wage of $ 54,966 in April. The energy and utilities industry boasted the highest median base pay as of last month, with an average salary of $56,505.

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Black, Hispanic unemployment rates hit record lows in April

The unemployment rate for black workers hit the lowest on record in April, according to the latest jobs figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday. The unemployment rate for black workers dropped to 6.6 percent, beating the previous record low of 6.8 percent set in December. The jobless rate for Hispanics fell to 4.8 percent, tying the record reached last year and in 2006. Meanwhile, unemployment for white Americans stood at 3.6 percent. “There’s a heck of a lot of good news in this report,” Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said of the numbers on Fox Business. President Trump has trumpeted the historically low unemployment rates for minorities seen in recent months..

And well he should!  This is the news that CNN and MSNBC don’t want you to know about.  They’d rather focus on some Trump Tweet or Stormy Daniels (or her attorney); totally irrelevant fake news.