Labor Line

September 2013___________________________________Labor line has job news and commentary with a one stop short cut for America's job markets and job related data including the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This month's job and employment summary data are below. This month's inflation data is below.The Establishment Job Report and Establishment Job Details for data released September 6, 2013.American Job Market The ChronicleCurrent Job and Employment Data Jobs Total Non-Farm Establishment Jobs up 169,000 to 136,133,000Total...

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Mr. Boehner and the Debt Ceiling

The Congress has passed debt ceiling legislation for many years pandering to voters who worry debt is sin, or a symbol of excess, or brings economic collapse. As the economy grows debt grows creating a repeated cycle of debt ceiling votes. Taking a vote gives a minority of politicians an opportunity to make politically correct statements about the excesses of government and their noble efforts to limit the excess. Then the majority makes the only sensible decision and votes to raise the debt ceiling. I have never heard a politician of either party...

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A Walmart Minimum Wage for the District of Columbia

The District of Columbia City Council recently passed the Large Retailer Accountability Act that the mayor still needs to sign. Retailers, who are part of a larger company with revenue over $1 billion per year and occupy more than 75,000 feet of retail space, will be expected to pay all employees at least $12.50 an hour. In effect, the City Council has decided Walmart should be required to pay better wages than the $8.25 minimum wage everyone else is required to pay. Economic conditions in retail for the District of Columbia suggest possible surprises...

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Federal Taxes and Horizontal Equity

Taxes should be fair and horizontal equity defines one principle of tax fairness. It means economic equals should be taxed an equal amount. Horizontal equity applied to taxes on $50,000 of income assures all those who earn $50,000 of income pay the same tax. Taxation that treats equals equally avoids giving preferences to different sources of income and avoids deductions and exclusions that do not apply equally to all. In practice, the characteristics that define equals vary some depending on personal opinion. For example, in federal taxation a...

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The Signal and the Noise

Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail And Some Don’t” (NY: Penguin Press, 2012), 454 pages.Nate Silver gained national attention with a forecasting system he developed in 2003 called PECOTA. He used baseball data to forecast the performance of major league baseball players. It was very successful and the attention he got allowed him the time and money to expand his interests into other areas and write us a thoughtful and reflective book on forecasting. The Signal and the Noise is a book for people who like data and...

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Inflation and Wages for 2006 to 2012

News of college graduates struggling to pay student loans draws attention to wages. College graduates who cannot find jobs using their college degree skills add to the pool of labor looking for already low wage jobs, potentially lowering wages and buying power even more. Wages need to keep up with inflation to assure Americans can buy what they produce and keep themselves employed. In practice comparing wages over time requires adjusting wages for inflation with the Consumer Price Index to compare buying power, or real wages. For example, the median...

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Computer Support Specialists

Computer Support Specialists have two occupationsStandard Occupational Classification #15-1151 Computer User Support SpecialistsStandard Occupational Classification #15-1152 Computer Network Support SpecialistsSOC Definition for #15-1151-- Provide technical assistance to computer users. Answer questions or resolve computer problems for clients in person, or via telephone or electronically. May provide assistance concerning the use of computer hardware and software, including printing, installation, word processing, electronic mail, and operating...

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A Shortage of Manufacturing Skills?

President Carter’s domestic policy advisor, Stuart Eizenstat, and Robert Lerman, an Urban Institute Fellow, claim there is a skills gap in manufacturing that threatens America’s manufacturing comeback. [“Bring back the apprentice”, Washington Post, May 5, 2013, and republished on yahoo] Readers are asked to accept a citation from an unnamed survey that claims 600,000 jobs go unfilled because the skills gap is real and America needs an apprenticeship program. They worry “We are at risk of squandering this historic opportunity – mainly because firms...

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Executive Administrative Assistants

Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative AssistantsStandard Occupational Classification #43-6011 Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative AssistantsSOC Definition--Provide high-level administrative support by conducting research, preparing statistical reports, handling information requests, and performing clerical functions such as preparing correspondence, receiving visitors, arranging conference calls, and scheduling meetings. May also train and supervise lower-level clerical staff. Examples of other common names in use—Executive...

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The $9.00 an hour minimum

The Obama Administration recently proposed an increase in the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. The current minimum continues at $7.25 an hour where it has been since July 24th 2009, the date of the last of three planned increases passed by Congress. The proposed increase is a little over 24 percent over the three years from 2009 to 2012, more than inflation but still hardly a self supporting wage.At $9.00 an hour per full time employee the increase converts $3,640 [$1.75 x 2,080] of profit to cost per full time minimum wage employee. To employers...

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Minimum Wages - A Review

David Neumark and William L. Wascher, Minimum Wages, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008), 295 pages.The two economist authors wrote Minimum Wages for economists; that is except for a couple of sentences in the last chapter. The title of the last chapter, Summary and Conclusions, signals politicians and business types to the pages where they will find the conclusions they want to hear: “Based on the evidence from our nearly two decades of research on minimum wages . . . we find it very difficult to see good economic rationale for continuing to...

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Some Flaws in Health Care

Recently the Obama Administration announced the time has arrived to appoint health care experts to an Independent Payment Advisory Board as part of its duties under the Affordable Care Act. The legislation gives the advisory board authority to change Medicare reimbursements for doctors and determine new ways to deliver quality health care. The flaws in health care go much deeper than reimbursements. One of the flaws the advisory board cannot address with reimbursements comes because physician services operate as a separate component of the health...

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Unemployment Benefits in North Carolina

A Washington Post article [N.C. looks to cut jobless benefits, WP, 2/13/13] describes cuts in unemployment benefits as a drastic proposal from North Carolina lawmakers. Under the new plan benefits would drop from 26 weeks to 20 and the maximum benefits from $535 a week to $350. The governor believes they have little choice, they have a budget crisis, but the quotations from business supporters give another reason: cuts are needed to improve the economic climate and rebuild unemployment insurance funds. Lew Ebert, the president of the North Carolina...

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The End of Men and the Rise of Women

Hanna Rosin, The End of Men and the Rise of Women, (NY: Riverhead Books, 2012), 271 pages, $27.95Think of The End of Men and the Rise of Women as a labor economics book with a narrow focus on gender and jobs. Rosin compares men and women as job seekers and job holders after 40 years of feminism and a decline of gender discrimination. The book opens with an introductory chapter that defines plastic women and cardboard men. A plastic women is the stay at home mom of the 1950’s transformed into an assertive college educated women who keeps her old...

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Virginia Money

In the Chicken Little folk tale, Chicken Little becomes hysterical along with friends Henny Penny, Lucky Ducky, and Foxey Loxey when they all agree the sky is falling. In Virginia, delegate Robert G. Marshall believes the Federal Reserve Bank will bring financial hysteria with hyper inflation like Germany after WWI. He wants to protect Virginians by having a new Virginia currency. [Virginia-only currency one step closer to reality” 2/6/13] He got the Virginia legislature to allocate $17,440 to study a metallic-based currency for Virginia. He was...

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A 2013 Job Review

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its January report showing a seasonally adjusted December increase of 155 thousand jobs. The increase for the 12 months ending December 2012 is 1.836 million jobs, a respectable, but hardly spectacular increase for the year. The job totals for 2012 will be subject to review and possible revision next month, but the end of the year totals gives an opportunity to make an assessment of job growth for the future. During the recession jobs declined 8.78 million from January 2008 until February of 2010. After...

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Taxes and Entitlements

During the Presidential campaign candidate Romney had a speech secretly recorded where he told listeners that he could not expect to get votes from the 47 percent of tax payers who do not pay federal income taxes. In the speech Romney characterized that group of income-tax-free Americans as being “dependent on the government” and feeling “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”Americans have often worried about people who do not support themselves working. Back in the great depression after unemployment peaked at 25 percent...

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