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| A job fair in Philadelphia last week. Credit Matt Rourke/Associated Press |
Hiring Is Strong and Jobless Rate Declines to 6.1%
The jobs numbers for the month of June came in stronger than expected with 288,000 added. As a result, the unemployment rate has dropped to 6.1%, which is the lowest since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Economists had expected a gain of between 200,000 to 250,000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job gains were across the board in professional and business services, retail, healthcare, and food services. So far in 2014, the number of unemployed persons has declined by 1.4 percentage points, or 2.3 million people. The number of long-term unemployed also dropped by 293,000 to 3.1 million.
Many segments of the economy have rebounded — including corporate profits, Wall Street and the housing market — even as payrolls inched higher at a grindingly slow rate. Now, these broader economic gains are prompting businesses to actually hire significantly more workers in response to growing demand, rather than taking half steps, like adding hours to stretch existing work forces.
Despite the broad gains, the economy is still a long way from its peak before the housing bubble burst and the recession began at the end of 2007. The broadest measure of unemployment, which includes people who are working part time because full-time positions are not available, stands at 12.1 percent. And the proportion of Americans in the labor force has been stuck for three straight months at 62.8 percent, a 36-year low, and is down sharply from 66 percent in 2008.
But the recent healthy level of hiring looks more sustainable than it has in years. Factoring in June’s increase and upward revisions for estimated hiring in April and May, employers added an average of 231,000 workers a month in the first half of 2014, the best six-month run since the spring of 2006
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JUDGE CALLS CHARGES AGAINST 'CANNIBAL COP' FANTASY & FREES OFFICER
Read it at New York Post
‘Cannibal Cob’ Gilberto Valle is about to taste freedom. Valle was granted release by a Manhattan judge on Tuesday afternoon on a $100,000 bond and will serve house arrest.
Late Monday, a federal judge overturned the former New York police officer’s conviction, saying there was insufficient evidence for the charge that he plotted to cook, eat, rape, and murder women. Judge Paul Gardephe wrote in his reversal that “the evidentiary record is such that it is more likely than not the case that all of Valle’s Internet communications about kidnapping are fantasy role-play.” Gardephe did uphold Valle’s second count of illegally using NYPD databases to target women, but Valle has already served over a year in prison, which meets the sentencing requirement for that crime.