Late last month, President Barack Obama took a step around the longstanding congressional gridlock over labor and employment policies by announcing a plan to boost the salary threshold governing overtime from US$23,600 to $50,440 and to index it to inflation.
Essentially, that means white-collar workers in that salary range, currently exempt from receiving overtime pay, would get 1.5 times their hourly wages for anything over 40 hours.
According to a recent report by BloombergBusiness, jobs in the US healthcare sector are more plentiful than ever before. Indeed, according to statistics for April 2015, job openings in the healthcare industry reached a new record high that surpassed anything seen before in over 14 years of data collection. However, the hiring rate for those record numbers of openings remained almost constant.
Declarations of support for “hardworking people” were commonly heard in the UK general election. This was echoed in the Queen’s Speech, when David Cameron said the 26-bill package was a “programme for working people”. Our research shows that there is another story to be told about Britain’s hardworking people, however, and the support they need.
Workers’ wages have stagnated, even as the unemployment rate has plunged to a seven-year low and the economy is bounding ahead. Some people propose raising the federal minimum wage and bolstering labor unions to address slow growth in wages.
An effort to weaken organized labor is sweeping the Midwest, a region with a rich history of union activism.
The strategy takes advantage of a curious provision of US labor law, section 14 (b). It allows states to pass laws that prohibit unions from negotiating the collection of union dues with employers and, more specifically, from compelling workers covered by the bargaining agreement to pay them as a condition of employment.
Job growth in the United States saw a steady growth during October, and the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level in six years. Economists have suggested that these factors highlight the resilience of the American economy in the face of slowing global demand and a socialist American President whose party just voted down a jobs bill called the Keystone Pipeline.
Global growth is going to decelerate while American workers get fewer jobs as employers expect more for less.
A bearish trend in U.S. equities was disrupted last Friday on better U.S. employment data, but a recent study on income and poverty shows better employment is benefiting men more than women and unmarried households over married ones.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an increase of 248,000 jobs in September, while employment for August was revised up from a gain of 142,000 to a gain of 180,000. The headline unemployment rate fell below 6% for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008, reaching levels last seen in 2004.
Stocks in the U.S. saw one of their steepest declines late last week on worries that the Federal Reserve will begin tightening its monetary policy this week. Bond yields also rose in last week trading, with the 10-year U.S. Treasury rose over 15 basis points in a month to 2.62%. Some analysts believe the sell-off is likely to continue as several metrics point to a much-needed correction in equity markets.
Job openings rose 22% year over year in July, according to a new report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A total of 4.7 million job openings were posted in July, compared to 3.8 million in July 2013 and 4.7 million in June.
The number of job openings has risen sharply in 2014 after slumping slightly in February on cold weather, a sign that businesses are investing more heavily for growing demand in the U.S. economy. Private industry jobs grew 22% year over year to 4.2 million, while government job openings rose 26% in the same period to 485,000.
