Tag Archives: jobs

July jobs report: in which an absolute positive blowout make me happily wrong; all pandemic job losses now recovered  –  by New Deal democrat As I wrote earlier this week, the short leading indicators for both jobs (real retail sales) and the unemployment rate (initial jobless claims) have each signaled that we should expect weaker monthly employment reports, with both fewer new jobs and a higher unemployment rate. I have been noting this ever...

I spoke first to Eric Rubin, a career diplomat since 1985 at the State Department, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, and currently president of the American Foreign Service Association. He is crystal clear that “you cannot speak publicly against government policy. If you want to do that, you must resign. It’s anti-democratic. It is inappropriate to believe you know better than the people’s elected representatives.” Rubin also believes that resignations rarely have any impact on policy....

Real retail sales declined in November, but continue to auger well for strong jobs growth, New Deal Democrat Retail sales, one of my favorite “real” economic indicators, were reported this morning for November. They increased 0.3% for the month, and October’s blockbuster report was revised 0.1% higher, to +1.8%. After inflation, though, “real” retail sales declined  -0.5%.  Although real retail sales are down -2.6% from their April peak, they...

I stumbled upon this article riding home yesterday. It is a pod cast called: On the Media. I catch it at times on my local NPR. Some very intriguing discussions are presented. This one is very timely considering the great dropout in the work force. Or, “resignation” as it is being called. It caught my attention because of what just might be a new interest in unions? Take this Job and Shove It: The article is about 1 hour long. It looks...

Record High Job Quitting; Record Low Layoff Rate, MarketWatch 666, AB Commenter and Blogger RJS The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for April from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated seasonally adjusted job openings jumped by by 998,000, from 8,288,000 in March to 9,286,000 job openings in April, after March’s record job openings were revised 165,000 higher, from 8,123,000 to 8,288,000 . . . April’s jobs openings...

Pretty good piece in SSIR by Kevin Starr and Sarah Miers of the Mulago Foundation, why don’t big NGOs scale up other social entrepreneurs’ solutions? They spoke to a bunch of leaders and once they got past the laughter and disbelief at the idea, found “Not created here syndrome” that everybody knows about Big funders like government aid agencies prioritize project-based work Differing priorities at country vs. headquarters Hard to replicate someone else’s idea and get it to work They...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. You can register for the big NEUDC development conference, featuring an opening address by Penny Goldberg, held Fri Nov 6 – Sat Nov 7, now all online! You can also still submit an abstract (500 word limit) for a lightning round session, deadline Monday! Cool paper comparing 150 education interventions from Noam Angrist, David Evans, Deon Filmer, Rachel Glennerster, F. Halsey Rogers and Shwetlena Sabarwal. They use a common...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Medellin, Colombia New results from my colleagues in Colombia with Chris Blattman, David Cerero,  Gustavo Duncan, Sebastian Hernandez, Benjamin Lessing, Juan F. Martínez, Juan Pablo Mesa-Mejía, Helena Montoya, and Santiago Tobón find the sensationalized headlines from early in the COVID days about gangs enforcing quarantine don’t hold up, at least in Medellin, where gangs do provide a lot neighborhood municipal services. Using...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Planet Money’s new resource for educators pairs podcast episodes with lesson plans, cataloged by topic. It’s a big week for findings from cash studies including: publication of Chris’s study with Fiala and Martinez showing cash benefitted Ugandan participants, but by 9 years later the control group had caught up; Universal Basic Income in Kenya buffered against hard times when COVID and the agricultural lean season hit...

Photo: Larry George II on UnsplashGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action For your travels this weekend I’ve put up some favorite podcast recommendations, plus some bonus reading, and kids’ podcasts. (Though they’re all potentially kids’ podcasts, in that when my kids misbehave in the back seat I threaten to put on an econ podcast and they shape up pretty quick.)The Nathan Nunn article on rethinking economic development was very readable. He argues that instead of...