We hear a lot of talk about how small businesses are the engines of growth and job creation. But we don't often see data backing up this "conventional wisdom." (To be clear, job creation isn't the only reason to support small businesses...

In the years following the Great Recession, we have seen a rise in part-time employment in the US. The Atlanta Fed has been spending some quality time looking into what that means for wages and overall compensation, as part-time workers are less costly...

Top executive pay keeps going up, according to Mercer MThink . Performance awards have become the norm at many top corporations, so the rising stock values are one part of the significant increases over the last two years, but Long Term Incentives might...

"Employers are loosening the purse strings, ever so slightly," according to Mercer MThink . The results of a Mercer survey on employee compensation give hope that firms are increasing pay and overall compensation in order to keep top talent...

We are learning more and more about the behavior of people seeking jobs since the recession. Cleveland Fed researchers have spent some time looking into how much time unemployed persons spent looking for jobs during the post recession years compared to...

The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in July. That was almost 80,000 fewer than June, but still a welcome increase. Yet it wasn't enough to push the unemployment rate down. Instead, it ticked up a little, and is now at 6.2%, according to the Department...

The unemployment rate has dropped to 6.1%, and yet we still read about a shortage of skilled workers. Brookings Senior Fellow Gary Burtless is a little skeptical of the "skills mismatch" narrative, so he looked a little more closely at some...

In 2012 California voters approved some tax increases that opponents argued would hurt employment in the state. Now, 18 months after the increases were put into effect, David Cay Johnston points out that the rate of job growth in California is outpacing...

Retail sales rose again in June, though not at the clip of the previous month. Sales came in at $439.9 billion for the month, a 0.2 percent increase over May sales (which had increased 0.5% over April), according to the Commerce Department. Sales were...

Retail sales rose again in May, increasing 0.3 percent over April sales. All in all, the last three months have seen a welcome boost for retailers, with the Commerce Department sharing revised numbers for April showing 0.5% growth that month. From the...

Mark Thoma calls attention to two interesting pieces today on unemployment. John Schmitt , Hye Jin Rho , and Shawn Fremstad of the Center for Economic and Policy Research have a short comparison of unemployment rates of OECD (Organization for Economic...

Yesterday we looked at the dimming job prospects for new MBAs in this economy. But as disappointing as the market may be for MBAs, undergraduates are facing some worse news. There is an increasing amount of evidence showing that graduating in a bad economy...

We are often looking to Washington to fix the employment problem. Or at least the prevailing language of the news media encourages us to look to Washington. And while we may recognize limitations on policymakers, Mark Thoma says that they may in fact...

Mark Thoma reminds us that the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco provides a very convenient, succinct monthly outlook online called FedViews. Basically, FedViews is a page of short updates and charts, like these: Check it out here .

With a lot of economists and economy-watchers not fully satisfied with the unemployment rate as a measure of how many Americans are out of work, Gallup is launching a new measure. Payroll to Population is designed to give a clearer picture of the percentage...

The U.S. economy added another 195,000 jobs in May--20,000 more than in May--but the unemployment rate remains at 7.6%, according to the Department of Labor . The labor force participation rate edged up ever so slightly to 63.5 percent. Here's...

In the middle of the political convention season, there is a lot of talk about jobs. Or lack of jobs, to be more accurate. But the National Employment Law Project wants us to focus more on the types of jobs that were lost. In short, America’s...

Top White House economic adviser Austin Goolsbee was on ABC's This Week yesterday, and he tried to strike an optimistic tone about jobs for 2011: While we haven't seen the final employment numbers for 2010,...

In case any doubt lingers in you about the correlation between education and employment, the latest OECD annual report, Education at a Glance , affirms previous data on how much better people with higher ed degrees are faring during this jobless recovery...

We have been taught to believe that advancing technology lifts most (if not all) boats. That workers will have better lives as computers and robots take over some of the more mundane tasks. But writing for the Boston Globe's Ideas section, Sarah Laskow...

The U.S. economy added 171,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate has risen slightly to 7.9%, according to the Department of Labor . Professional and business services had the biggest jump in employment, with 51,000 jobs added in that sector...

Ahead of tomorrow's widely anticipated jobs report, Kathy Ruffing , a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , takes a look at data on labor participation rates. And she finds an important, but largely overlooked, detail from...

Workers around the world on not very optimistic about their job prospects. And blue collar workers are especially pessimistic. According to a Gallup survey conducted globally last year but released this week, 33% of blue collar workers worldwide thought...

As the national unemployment rate continues a slow steady decline, some states and regions have seen sharper changes. Among the thirty states that have had statistically significant changes in employment since September 2011, only West Virginia has seen...

Over at Economix , Yale economists Ben Polak and Peter Schott point to local government jobs as what makes the current recovery and historical anomaly. Private employment may not have come back at the rate it did following past recessions, but it has...