Showing posts with label Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show all posts

Monday, January 12, 2015

And your point is?

January 12, 2015 Bureau of Labor Statistics , BuzzFeed 0 Comments
Construction Work Is Getting More Deadly, But Only For Latinos

David Noriega, Jan. 6, 2015, Buzzfeed

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), between 2010 and 2013, the number of deaths among Latinos in the construction industry rose from 181 to 231. The number of deaths also rose in the industry overall, from 774 to 796. But Latinos account for this rise entirely: During the same period, deaths for non-Latino construction workers fell from 593 to 565. (The numbers for 2013 are preliminary, and are likely to go up across the board when BLS revises them in the spring.)

Read more: www.buzzfeed.com

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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Work ethic has changed?

November 16, 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics , Paul Bedard 0 Comments
Giving Up: 40% Women, 28% Men, 39% Youth Don't Want A Job

Paul Bedard, Nov. 14, 2014, Washington Examiner

Nearly four in 10 Americans, or 92 million, are not in the labor force and now there’s a reason why: They have simply given up and don’t want to work.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest group of people not in the labor force are those who don’t want a job, a remarkable statement on the nation’s work ethic. The federal job counter said that 85.9 million adults last month didn’t want a job, or 93 percent of all adults not in the labor force.

A Pew Research Center analysis out Friday dug a bit deeper to find out who those people are. Many are younger Americans who seem far less interested it landing a job than previous generations, possibly discouraged by the lack of good-paying jobs.

Read more: www.washingtonexaminer.com


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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Unintended consequence

September 09, 2014 Ali Meyer , Bureau of Labor Statistics 0 Comments
BLS: Unemployed More Likely to Go Shopping Than Look for Job

By Ali Meyer, Sept. 8, 2014, CNSNews.com









(CNSNews.com) - On the average day, an unemployed American is more likely to be shopping—for things other than groceries and gas---than to be looking for a new job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Only 18.9 percent of Americans who were unemployed (in surveys conducted from 2009 through 2013) spent time in job search and interviewing activities on an average day, according to BLS. Yet 40.8 percent of the unemployed did some kind of shopping on the average day--either in a store, by telephone, or on the Internet. 22.5 percent of the unemployed, according to BLS, were shopping for items other than groceries, food and gas.

The BLS conducts a study called the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) which tracks how Americans spend their time doing various activities during a given day. “The goal of the survey is to measure how people divide their time among life’s activities,” explains the BLS. “Individuals are randomly selected from subset of households that have completed their eighth and final month of interviews for the Current Population Survey (CPS). ATUS respondents are interviewed only one time about how they spent their time on the previous day, where they were, and whom they were with.”

Read the full story:  www.cnsnews.com

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Friday, September 5, 2014

In other economic news...

September 05, 2014 Ali Meyer , Bureau of Labor Statistics 0 Comments
Record 92,269,000 Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Matches 36-Year Low

By Ali Meyer, Sept. 5, 2014, CNSNews.com

(CNSNews.com) - A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent in six of the last twelve months, but prior to last October had not fallen that low since 1978.

BLS employment statistics are based on the civilian noninstitutional population, which consists of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home.

In August, the civilian noninstitutional population was 248,229,000 according to BLS. Of that 248,229,000, 155,959,000—or 62.8 percent--participated in the labor force, meaning they either had or job or had actively sought one in the last four weeks.

Read the full story:  www.cnsnews.com

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Friday, July 4, 2014

Unemployment Improves, But Still Dreadful For Millennials --Backed Obama in '08 and '12--How's that working for you?

July 04, 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics , Job Numbers 1 Comments
By Robby Soave, Jul. 3, 2014, Reason.com

A generally encouraging jobs report was released Thursday, inspiring some confidence that the limping economy was recovering. According to Forbes:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a surprisingly strong jobs report Thursday morning.

Employers added 288,000 jobs in June, significantly more than the 215,000 economists were anticipating. The unemployment rate, which is drawn from a different survey of households, dropped from 6.3% to 6.1% the lowest rate since September 2008.

Immediately following the news the S&P 500, The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite were in the green, continuing positive trends seen leading up to the pre-bell release. The Dow crossed 17,000 for the first time ever seconds after the opening bell before settling around 17,050.

The May payroll number was revised up from plus 217,000 jobs to plus 224,000. April’s employment number was also revised from 282,000 jobs added to 304,000. Total employment gains those months were therefore 29,000 higher than BLS — a division of the Department of Labor — previously reported. Job growth averaged 272,000 for the last three months.

“This was a strong report any way you slice it,” wrote RBS U.S. Economist Omair Sharif in a note on the news. Sharif pointed out that the unemployment rate is “where the Fed thought we would be at year-end, and it’s only June.”

The New York Times' Neil Irwin writes that while the numbers are indeed inspiring, there is good reason to be cautious. The job market has periodically experienced an errant, solid quarter only to plummet again:

So the reasons I’m saving the fireworks for the July 4 holiday, rather than this jobs report, is not because there is some obvious soft underbelly. It’s because we’ve kind of seen this before.

Read the full story:  www.reason.com

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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Median CEO Pay Crosses $10 Million In 2013 --See 2nd from last paragraph about female pay!

May 27, 2014 Associated Press , Bureau of Labor Statistics 0 Comments
By Ken Sweet, May 27, 2014, Bigstory.ap.org

NEW YORK (AP) — They're the $10 million men and women.

Propelled by a soaring stock market, the median pay package for a CEO rose above eight figures for the first time last year. The head of a typical large public company earned a record $10.5 million, an increase of 8.8 percent from $9.6 million in 2012, according to an Associated Press/Equilar pay study.

Last year was the fourth straight that CEO compensation rose following a decline during the Great Recession. The median CEO pay package climbed more than 50 percent over that stretch. A chief executive now makes about 257 times the average worker's salary, up sharply from 181 times in 2009.

The best paid CEO last year led an oilfield-services company. The highest paid female CEO was Carol Meyrowitz of discount retail giant TJX, owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall's. And the head of Monster Beverage got a monster of a raise.

Over the last several years, companies' boards of directors have tweaked executive compensation to answer critics' calls for CEO pay to be more attuned to performance. They've cut back on stock options and cash bonuses, which were criticized for rewarding executives even when a company did poorly. Boards of directors have placed more emphasis on paying CEOs in stock instead of cash and stock options.

The change became a boon for CEOs last year because of a surge in stocks that drove the Standard & Poor's 500 index up 30 percent. The stock component of pay packages rose 17 percent to $4.5 million.

"Companies have been happy with their CEOs' performance and the stock market has provided a big boost," says Gary Hewitt, director of research at GMI Ratings, a corporate governance research firm. "But we are still dealing with a situation where CEO compensation has spun out of control and CEOs are being paid extraordinary levels for their work."

The highest paid CEO was Anthony Petrello of oilfield-services company Nabors Industries, who made $68.3 million in 2013. Petrello's pay ballooned as a result of a $60 million lump sum that the company paid him to buy out his old contract.

Nabors Industries did not respond to calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Petrello was one of a handful of chief executives who received a one-time boost in pay because boards of directors decided to re-negotiate CEO contracts under pressure from shareholders. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold CEO Richard Adkerson also received a one-time payment of $36.7 million to renegotiate his contract. His total pay, $55.3 million, made him the third-highest paid CEO last year.

The second-highest paid CEO among companies in the S&P 500 was Leslie Moonves of CBS. Moonves' total compensation rose 9 percent to $65.6 million in 2013, a year when the company's stock rose nearly 70 percent.

"CBS's share appreciation was not only the highest among major media companies, it was near the top of the entire S&P 500," CBS said in a statement. "Mr. Moonves' compensation is reflective of his continued strong leadership."

Media industry CEOs were, once again, paid handsomely. Viacom's Philippe Dauman made $37.2 million while Walt Disney's Robert Iger made $34.3 million. Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes earned $32.5 million.

The industry with the biggest pay bump was banking. The median pay of a Wall Street CEO rose by 22 percent last year, on top of a 22 percent increase the year before. BlackRock chief Larry Fink made the most, $22.9 million. Kenneth Chenault of American Express ranked second with earnings of $21.7 million.

Like stock compensation, performance cash bonuses jumped last year as a result of the surging stock market and higher corporate profits. Earnings per share of the S&P 500 rose 5.3 percent in 2013, according to FactSet. That resulted in an average cash bonus of $1.9 million, a jump of 12.9 percent from the prior year.

More than two-thirds of CEOs at S&P 500 companies received a raise last year, according to the AP/Equilar study, because of the bigger profits and higher stock prices.

CEO pay remains a divisive issue in the U.S. Large investors and boards of directors argue that they need to offer big pay packages to attract talented men and women who can run multibillion-dollar businesses.

"If you have a good CEO at a company, the wealth he might generate for shareholders could be in the billions," says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "It might be worth paying these guys millions for doing this type of work."

CEOs are still getting much bigger raises than the average U.S. worker.

The 8.8 percent increase in total pay that CEOs got last year dwarfed the average raise U.S. workers received. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said average weekly wages for U.S. workers rose 1.3 percent in 2013. At that rate an employee would have to work 257 years to make what a typical S&P 500 CEO makes in a year.

"There's this unbalanced approach, where there's all this energy put into how to reward executives, but little energy being put into ensuring the rest of the workforce is engaged, productive and paid appropriately," says Richard Clayton, research director at Change to Win Investment Group, which works with labor union-affiliated pension funds.

Investors have become increasingly vocal about executive pay since the recession. This has led to an increasing number of public spats between boards of directors, who propose pay packages, and shareholders, who own the company. These fights become public during "say on pay" votes, when shareholders have an opportunity to show they approve or don't approve of pay packages. Votes are non-binding, but companies sometimes act when there is clear disapproval from shareholders.

Petrello was the best-paid CEO largely because the board of directors of Nabors Industries' wanted to end his previous contract. Under that contract, Petrello could have been owed huge cash bonuses, and the company could have paid out tens of millions of dollars if he were to die or become disabled. The board changed his contract following "say on pay" votes in 2012 and 2013 that showed shareholders were unhappy with how Nabors paid its executives.

There have been other signs of shareholder concern about CEO pay. This month, 75 percent of Chipotle Mexican Grill shareholders voted against a proposed pay package for co-CEOs Steve Ells and Montgomery Moran. Ells earned $25.1 million in 2013 while Moran earned $24.3 million, a 27 percent rise in compensation for each. Chipotle spent $49.5 million on CEO pay last year, the fourth highest in the S&P 500.

"Companies are now taking the time to think through their pay practices and are talking more with shareholders," says Hewitt of GMI Ratings. "There's still a long way to go but pay practices are getting better."

To calculate a CEO's pay package, the AP and Equilar looked at salary as well as perks, bonuses and stock and option awards, using the regulatory filings that companies file each year. Equilar looked at data from 337 companies that had filed their proxies by April 30. It includes CEOs who have been at the company for two years.

One prominent name not included in the data was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who is typically one of the best paid CEOs in the country.

Oracle files its salary paperwork later in the year, so Ellison was excluded in the 2013 survey data. He was awarded $76.9 million in stock options for Oracle's fiscal year ending May 2013, according to proxy filings.

Among other findings:

— Female CEOs had a median pay package worth more than their male counterparts, $11.7 million versus $10.5 million for males. However, there were only 12 female CEOs in the AP/Equilar study compared with 325 male CEOs that were polled.

— The CEO who got the biggest bump in compensation from 2012 to 2013 was Rodney Sacks, the CEO of Monster Beverage. Sacks earned $6.22 million last year, an increase of 679 percent. Monster's board of directors awarded Sacks $5.3 million in stock options to supplement his $550,000 salary and $300,000 cash bonus.


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Thursday, April 10, 2014

White House Pay Gap Twice As Large As Pay Gap In D.C. --Obama's 'war on women'

April 10, 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics , Caroline May 0 Comments
By Caroline May, Apr. 9, 2014, Daily Caller

While the White House has argued that the wage gap between men and women in the White House is better than the national average, it is far worst than the average in the District of Columbia.  The pay gap among women in the White House is more than twice as large as the average in the nation’s capital.

While female White House staffers earn about 88 cents for every dollar men in the White House make, women in the District earn about 95 cents for every dollar a men make, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That’s a 12-cent pay gap at the White House compared to a five-cent pay gap in the District of Columbia.

The metric used to derive both pay gaps is the same the government has used to arrive at the 77-cent national average.  Nevertheless, White House press secretary Jay Carney spent this week arguing that there is no pay discrimination at the White House.

“It is absolutely true that there is equal pay for equal work at the White House,” Carney said Tuesday.

Read the full story:  www.dailycaller.com

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Thursday, April 3, 2014

98% of Networks' Jobs Stories Ignore Black Unemployment --But can spot a 'racist' Tea Party sign a mile away

April 03, 2014 ABC News , Black Unemployment 0 Comments
By Sean Long, Apr. 3, 2014, Newsbusters.org
There is a jobs crisis in the U.S. that is going virtually unnoticed by the broadcast networks. The unemployment rate for African Americans towers over the national average, upsetting conservatives and liberals.
In spite of bipartisan outrage, the three broadcast networks gave just 10 seconds combined to the black unemployment rate around the monthly jobs reports in the past year. Liberal Rev. Jesse Jackson was one of many frustrated people. He has complained that “the media [is] dismissing it as not important.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data revealed a severe jobs crisis for African-Americans even in recent months. While the national unemployment rate for all races was 6.7 percent in February 2014, the black unemployment rate was almost twice that at 12 percent. There is little doubt that the March jobs report which will be released April 4 will continue to show a devastating gap between the two rates.
The Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute looked at broadcast network news coverage during the week surrounding the monthly release of jobs data going back for a year. BMI found that the subject of high black unemployment was completely ignored by 98 percent of jobs stories.
Of the 145 jobs-related stories during those weeks, the networks only mentioned the disproportionately high black unemployment rate in two stories. Both were on NBC and spent a combined total of 10 seconds on the “discouraging” black unemployment rate in reports about the overall jobs situation. ABC and CBS completely ignored black unemployment during this period, although they aired 100 stories about jobs.
Read the full story:  www.newsbusters.org


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The 77 Percent Lie -- And Why Obama Keeps Telling It -- By Larry Elder

April 03, 2014 Articles by Larry Elder , Bureau of Labor Statistics 2 Comments

American Association of University Women members with
President John F. Kennedy as he signs the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law
Source:  JFK Presidential Library and Museum
By Larry Elder, Apr. 3, 2014
A quick way to kill debate is to accuse your political adversary of “lying.”
           
Still, it’s hard to figure out what else propels President Barack Obama to falsely assert, yet again, that employers rip off female employees by paying them 23 cents less per dollar than men -- for doing the same work.
           
In his last State of the Union address, Obama said: “Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work. She deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job.” See, the president begins the statement with a fact. That is, women on the whole make 77 cents on the dollar compared to the earnings of men, on the whole. But here, as he has other times, Obama has added for the same work, or, as in this case, “equal pay for equal work.” This makes the statement not only flat out false, but insultingly so.
           
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host, Mika Brzezinski, echoed Obama: “Of course, women get paid 77 cents for every dollar men earn for the same exact job, so it's something that needs to be rectified, obviously.” (Now according to the Daily Beast, at $2 million, Mika makes half of what Scarborough makes. Time to hire a new agent perhaps, but it does not excuse falsely telling woman that they face a 23-cent ovary discount.)
           
Even the federal government -- that Obama serves as chief executive -- knows this is nonsense.
           
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor found that, after controlling for obvious education and job differences, the gender “wage gap” shrank to only 95 percent. The Labor Dept. report also noted women often make different choices than men: “A greater percentage of women than men tend to work part-time. Part-time work tends to pay less than full-time work. A greater percentage of women than men tend to leave the labor force for childbirth, childcare and elder care. Some of the wage gap is explained by the percentage of women who were not in the labor force during previous years, the age of women, and the number of children in the home. Women, especially working mothers, tend to value ‘family friendly’ workplace policies more than men. Some of the wage gap is explained by industry and occupation, particularly, the percentage of women who work in the industry and occupation.”
           
Even the 5 percent “gap” has a non-exploited explanation. The Labor report said:
           
“Research also suggests that differences not incorporated into the model due to data limitations may account for part of the remaining gap. …[M]uch of the literature, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics Highlights of Women’s Earnings, focus on wages rather than total compensation. Research indicates that women may value non-wage benefits more than men do, and as a result prefer to take a greater portion of their compensation in the form of health insurance and other fringe benefits.”
           
What’s more, three years ago USA Today found that young, childless, unmarried working women ages 22-30 out-earn men of the same age: “Women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no kids earn a median $27,000 a year, 8 percent more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data. …”
           
“The trend is especially apparent,” said USA Today, “in cities where minority groups make up more than half the population. Among blacks and Hispanics, women are more than twice as likely as men to earn college degrees.” They found the largest discrepancy in Atlanta, Ga., where woman out-earned men by 21 percent.
           
Again, why does Obama keep pushing this blatant untruth? Four possibilities: stupidity, ignorance, agenda/motive or he chooses to believe it.
           
Possibility number one: Say what you want about Obama, stupid he's not.
           
Possibility number two: Obama lacks access to and understanding of the information? The president of United States does not want for research, data, information, you name it -- he and someday she, has plenty of information.
           
Possibility number three: The falsehood advances Obama’s agenda of combating “inequality” while attacking the GOP for its “war on women.” This helps to maintain the so-called voter "gender gap” with single female voters. Even Obama’s Labor Department noted on the first page of their 93-page report, “The [77-cent] wage gap continues to be used in misleading ways to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.” Again, first page!
           
Possibility number four: Leftists, like Obama, make a conscious decision to ignore the evidence and choose an outcome consistent with their beliefs.
This is the kind of “cherry-picking” they once accused the anti-science, anti-intellectual George W. Bush of doing, to make a case for the Iraq War. Some people, goes the saying, believe what they see, and others see what they believe.
           

In Obama’s case, we are left with possibilities three and four. One is Machiavellian. The other is a willful disregard of truth. Both are offensive and harmful to the nation.

 Also published in Investors Business Daily
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