By now all have heard of the whistle blower exposing the NSA capturing all sorts of communications traffic. The latest is the United States and Great Britain didn't stop there, they have been spying at the G-20 meeting, filled with the highest echelons of economic and financial officials.
The May Consumer Price Index increased 0.1% from April. CPI measures inflation, or price increases. The culprit this time isn't gasoline, but shelter, which increased 0.3% for the month. This is the largest monthly increase in the shelter index since July 2011 and was responsible for half of the overall 0.1% inflation monthly increase. Take food and energy items out of the index and CPI actually rose 0.2% from April. Shelter is part of this figure.
Welcome to our round up of economic shorts. These are the latest outrages that caught our eye which you might have missed. Probably the biggest disaster happening today is the Senate pushing forward with a corporate written cheap labor immigration bill regardless of the negative impact this will have on jobs and the economy.
The May 2013 Federal Reserve's Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report shows no change in industrial production. Three of the last six months have shown no growth in industrial production and last month was a negative -0.4% change. For May, utilities output took a hit and declined -1.8% while mining increased 0.7%. Manufacturing showed a slight sign of life with a 0.1% monthly gain. Manufacturing has had little change so far for 2013, not a good sign.
Retirement is something most of us don't like to think about. It is not due to aging and fear of death. Instead, most of us are just scraping by, if that, and our retirement funds do not exist. Out of sight, out of mind is a way to deal with the deathly fear of having absolutely no money to take care of ourselves with in old age.
There is a war going on and it is against the U.S. worker. Tech companies have formed lobbyist groups, phony think tanks and social media traps. CEOs luncheon with the President of the United States, whispering their demands in the President's ear and he heartily obliges them Tech companies even wrote legislation, which was promptly passed by the Senate Judiciary committee under the guise of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Surprise, when tax revenues increase the deficit goes down. Such was the news of a new CBO update on the federal budget deficit.
If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, CBO estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008.
The BLS April JOLTS report, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey shows there are 3.1 official unemployed per job opening, the same as the last two months. Every month it is the same story, a static dead pool job market with employers clearly not hiring. Job openings declined -3.0% from last month to a total of 3,757,000. People hired did increase by 4.7% to 4,425 million. Yet, real hiring has only increased 22% from June 2009.
Corporate culture, HR hound dogs who hunt the squeaky wheel, bullying, abuse and politics abound for working America today. For those who still have a job, America has turned into a survivor game. No longer are workers respected and treated as human beings. Even those most educated and skilled are treated like pond scum
The Q1 2013 Productivity & Costs revision shows labor productivity increased an annualized 0.5%. Output increased 2.1% and hours worked increased 1.6%. Hourly compensation dropped -3.8% in Q1 2013. This is the largest quarterly decline for wages in history. Between the numbers lies even more bad news for workers. Labor is simply getting squeezed to death as workers created more while being paid less. This quarterly report also shows there is no worker shortage for compensation would surely rise if demand for workers exceeded supply.
Did you know rich students get financial help from colleges while the poor ones get laden with debt instead? Such is the conclusion of a new report, Demerit Aid, from the New America Foundation. While Pell grants tallied $35 billion in 2012, universities are reducing their own financial aid based on income and instead, shifting those funds to the wealthy students.
The BLS employment report shows the official unemployment rate ticked up 0.1 percentage point to 7.6% and the current population survey unemployment figures are a static pool of going nowhere fast statistics. More people were employed, yet the number of people stuck in part-time jobs barely budged from last month and the number of unemployed also increased. The labor participation rate increased 0.1 percentage points from the May 1979 record low. U-6, a broader measure of unemployment, ticked down -0.1 percentage point to 13.8%. Overall the CPS statistics look like an oscillating wave of stuck in neutral.
The rich get richer and the rest of us get the economic shaft. That is the theme of this so called economic recovery since 2009. A new Pew Research report, A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93%, analyzes newly released Census data on wealth. What they found is the rich got richer and the rest of us got poorer. The great American wealth transfer continues.
ADP's proprietary private payrolls jobs report shows a gain of 135,000 private sector jobs for May 2013. ADP revised April's job figures down by 6,000 to a measly 113 thousand jobs. Overall, May shows another month of more weak job figures. This report does not include government, or public jobs.
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