Working Life

   A lot of pain is going to continue to wash across the country. Witness this info on the continued lag in the construction industry: Construction is a big employer and one of the better-paid sectors for men who lack a college degree. The sector has shed 2.1 million jobs from its peak in March […]

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The danger in a blip of good news is that it’s simply that: a blip. It is certainly a good thing that the data shows that 162,000 jobs were added in March. But, the truth is that this is not much to celebrate. And it actually should be a siren to move dramatically to embrace […]

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   Conventional wisdom–along with a great dose of greed and blind faith in a failed economic model–caused the immediate economic crisis we are still deeply mired in. Every day, brings another does of conventional wisdom. Here is one from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. household wealth fell by $14 trillion during the recession, sapping confidence […]

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   I do not like to be negative. I’m actually quite the optimist, generally speaking. So, I admit to feeling uneasy that I’ve been presistently, regularly disbelieving about the talk of "economic recovery". I think that such talk ignores the actual FACTS and is largely driven by political imperatives–meaning, politicians who want to be re-elected […]

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   There is a rhetorical firefight going on in Britain that is worth reading. It’s carrying on in the letters section of the Financial Times. It started with a call this past Sunday from 20 conservative economists that the British government immediately begin cutting back the fiscal budget–an echo to what we are hearing in […]

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    I understand why many people do not expect much from most of the traditional media–particularly The New York Times. People don’t get the sense that the traditional media can get out of its own insular thinking to do hard, independent reporting about the facts.    The newest drumbeat being pushed by the traditional media […]

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   A quick post today on the run…someone is going to have a nice holiday haul thanks to you (from The Wall Street Journal): American International Group Inc. is preparing to pay its outgoing general counsel Anastasia Kelly several million dollars in severance after she resigned over federal pay curbs, according to people familiar with […]

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   This is not a new phenomena but it must be underscored: unemployment hits blacks, especially men, much harder than the rest of the population, as the Fiscal Policy Institute found is the case in New York City: The FPI report found that the citywide unemployment rate in the third quarter was 15.7 percent for […]

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   To understand how out of touch some of the people at the helm of large businesses are, consider the following contrast today. First, the nation’s ranks of unemployed–which have been swelled by the irresponsible behavior of, if I may quote the president, "fat-cat bankers"–are in dire straights: More than half of the nation’s unemployed […]

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   The president, having just announced that we would be wasting tens of billions of dollars more in a pointless, tragic, immoral war in Afghanistan, will hold a job summit tomorrow. It is a very small point but telling that we would first be told that vital resources will be spent in a conflict that […]

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