The Federal Reserve announced yesterday that, while "the economy is expanding at a moderate rate," it is maintaining the near-zero target interest rates. At least for the time being. The door appears to be open for a change later in the year...

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...

The U.S. economy added 321,000 jobs in November. While that number is startlingly high relative to just about any month in the last three years, it was not enough to push the unemployment rate needle--which still sits at 5.8%, according to the Department...

The U.S. economy added another 200,000+ jobs in October, and the unemployment rate is now down to 5.8%, according to the Department of Labor . The labor force participation is back up to 62.8% (from 62.7% in September--not a significant difference). Here's...

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...

Forget about robots taking jobs. This Economist goes beyond robots. The real question is what automation is doing to jobs that once were available to mere humans. And automation goes way beyond robots. It is beginning to look like the threat to jobs...

The unemployment rate has dropped below 6% after the U.S. economy added nearly a quarter million jobs in September. To be precise, there were 248,000 new jobs, and the unemployment rate is now at 5.9%, according to the Department of Labor . The labor...

With her non-profit business, Samasource , Leila Janah is trying to fight the harms of the "birth lottery"--people getting trapped in poverty based on where they are born rather than on their work ethic. In this Big Think interview, she talks...

We track the unemployment rate fairly closely. But we also make sure with each jobs report to look at the labor force participation rate, because that helps us better understand how many people are without work. In this video from the Brookings Institution...

In the final post of their Liberty Street Economics series on the value of a college degree, New York Fed researchers Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz look at the job prospects of recent college grads. Those prospects were not so great for many college grads...

The U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs in August. That was enough to push the unemployment rate back down to 6.1%, according to the Department of Labor . The labor force participation was at 62.8% (it was 62.9% in July). Here's a look at the unemployment...

Forty years ago Studs Terkel published his groundbreaking book. Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do was the result of over 100 interviews with people about their jobs. Each is highly compelling, and taken...

The unemployment rate remained flat in July, but remains improved from last year. The unemployment rate is now at 10.2% across the EU 28 and 11.5 % in the euro area, as estimated by Eurostat . Those numbers are down from 10.9% and 11.9% in July 2013....

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 0.1% in July (seasonally adjusted), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics . While this was the smallest monthly increase since February, the CPI-U has been growing all year. Food prices were...

Yes, US manufacturing is on the decline, when looking long term. But Theodore Moran and Lindsay Oldkenski , economists at Georgetown University and fellows at the Peterson Institute , take issue with the recent coverage. They argue that manufacturing...

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...

If you were to assume that economies with labor shortages would not have high unemployment, and places with high unemployment would not have significant labor shortages, you would have a lot of company. And yet, China appears to be struggling with both...

You don't need to be reading The Watch to be reminded that it is taking a long time for the recovery of the jobs market. It has been five years and we are still not back to where the unemployment rate is down to its pre-recession low. In a new Economic...

What people have been politely calling "the unemployment situation" in the U.S. just got a bit better--at least as far as the central government data is concerned. The unemployment rate dropped to 6.1% in June, as the economy added 288,000 jobs...

In a speech to the Utah and Montana Bankers Association yesterday, San Francisco Fed president John C. Williams addresses some of the concerns he's been hearing about the Federal Reserve's monetary policy moves. One of the concerns he hears most...

The Federal Reserve announced this week that it will continue to taper. That is, it will continue to pull back from its quantitative easing monetary policy. One trigger is, as it has been the last year or so, improved jobs data. Here is a key paragraph...

The latest Wall Street Journal's Forecasting Survey is out, and the participating economists largely share the White House's expectations for job growth in 2010. They see a very small drop in unemployment numbers--predicting, on average, the jobless...