Economist says ‘enormous’ N.J.-vs.-U.S. economic gap widening
DECEMBER 17, 2014 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
* Gap between state, U.S. job gains widens, Rutgers economist says
New Jersey’s employment problems may be structural, because of factors that include the decline of key industries and the shift away from suburban corporate campuses, and are unlikely to dramatically improve even as the national economic picture brightens, Rutgers University economists said Tuesday.
The gap between the national job-creation performance and New Jersey’s is actually widening, as the national jobs market strengthens and New Jersey’s flounders, said Nancy Mantell, director of the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service, which compiles an economic forecast for the state.
Mantell’s comments, made in New Brunswick at the economic forum organized by R/ECON every six months, offered a dose of grim reality to the hopes that New Jersey’s economy would bounce back as the nation’s does.
The R/ECON predictions came as New Jersey prepares to release the employment figures for November on Thursday. The state lost 4,500 jobs in October, and the jobless rate of 6.6 percent remains above the national rate of 5.8 percent.
1 in 5 Millennials Live in Poverty, Census Bureau Says
December 15, 2014 – 1:09 PM
By Ali Meyer
(CNSNews.com) – One in five young adults – ages 18 to 34 years old – live in poverty, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“More millennials are living in poverty today, and they have lower rates of employment, compared with their counterparts in 1980,” the Census states. “One in five young adults lives in poverty (13.5 million people), up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.”
The data comes from a new Census release called “Young Adults: Then and Now,” which “illustrates characteristics of the young adult population (age 18-34) across the decades using data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 Censuses and the 2009-2013 American Community Survey.”
In 1980, according to the Census, 14.1 percent of the total population ages 18 to 34 were living in poverty, which is determined by the millennial’s income in the past 12 months. In 1990, the percentage of millennials in poverty increased to 14.3 percent. In 2000, it climbed to 15.3 percent. And in 2009-2013 it reached the highest level recorded in the dataset of 19.7 percent.
Employment metrics, along with poverty metrics, have worsened for millennials. “Today, 65 percent of young adults are employed, down from 69 percent in 1980,” reports the Census. In 1980, 69.3 percent of the population ages 18 to 34 were employed. In 1990, the percentage climbed to 70.6 percent. In 2000, it dipped to 68.7 percent, and in 2009-2013 it dipped again to 65.0 percent – the lowest level recorded in the dataset.
‘What Are You Willing to Fight For?’: Democrats’ Depressing New Reality
The divisions that were on full display during the debate over a $1 trillion spending bill may become the norm in 2015.
To the very limited extent that congressional Democrats have enjoyed the last four years of gridlock on Capitol Hill, they have derived pleasure from watching the Republican Party rupture over and over again, its divisions between the conservative Tea Party and the establishment leadership preventing just about any real legislative accomplishments.
As afternoon turned to evening on Thursday, it was the Democrats who were turning on each other. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the liberal darling, railed against a White House-backed spending deal that narrowly passed the House just a couple hours before a midnight deadline for keeping the government open. During a marathon, closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement, Democrats debated two key questions: whether a pair of onerous giveaways for Wall Street and wealthy donors in a $1 trillion bill were cause for shutting down the government, and whether they could get a better deal from Republicans by rejecting this one.
“It does not get better.”
“It does not get better,” Representative Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who voted for the bill, said on Friday morning. “There were a number of us that respectfully had a different point of view that we didn’t have the kind of leverage that Elizabeth Warren was suggesting.” He was referring to the spending package, but he could have been talking about his party’s prospects as a whole in 2015. Come January, Republicans will run not just the House but also the Senate, and the debates among Democrats about exactly how far they should retreat will become familiar. In lobbying for the bill, which passed the Senate on Saturday night, the White House highlighted increased funding to fight Ebola and for regulatory agencies like the FCC, but officials focused just as much on what the Republicans didn’t gut, namely Obamacare, the president’s climate plan, and his immigration policy. That, too, will become the norm.
By Karen Tumulty and Sean Sullivan December 14 at 7:39 PM
In the six weeks since their repudiation in the midterms, Democrats have seen the opening of fissures within their once-disciplined ranks, marking the start of an internal struggle between now and the 2016 election over the ideological identity and tactical direction of the party.
The tension — shown in high relief during the messy final days of the congressional session — is in some ways a mirror image of the stresses within the Republican Party, which has been divided between its tea party and establishment factions in recent years.
In the case of both parties, the argument pits the more populist, purist elements of the base against the more pragmatic center.
For Democrats, “it is a conflict that was looking for an occasion,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was a policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “The election provided the occasion.”
Senate urged to approve $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep government running
DECEMBER 12, 2014, 4:03 PM LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2014, 11:48 PM
BY DAVID ESPO AND ANDREW TAYLOR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday urged the Senate to ratify a $1.1 trillion, House-passed spending bill that has roiled his Democratic Party, judging it an imperfect measure that stems from “the divided government that the American people voted for.”
What’s in the bill
The $1.1 trillion, 1,603-page bill awaiting a Senate vote is mostly spending choices, such as adding $5.4 billion to fight the Ebola virus or trimming the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by $60 million. But it’s also packed with a mishmash of “riders,” many of which couldn’t get through Congress on their own.
Here are some things the bill would affect:
SCHOOL LUNCHES: Eases rules requiring more whole grains in school lunches and suspends the lower sodium standards due to take effect in 2017, while keeping other healthy-eating rules. Some school nutrition directors — and some students complaining of yucky lunches — lobbied for a break from the standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama.
TRUCK SAFETY: Rolls back safety rules that were supposed to keep sleepy truckers from causing wrecks. The government’s rules had effectively shortened truckers’ maximum workweek from 82 hours to 70. The trucking industry fought back.
BANKING: Loosens rules imposed after the 2008 financial crisis. The change relaxes regulation of high-risk investments known as “derivatives” — rules that were imposed to reduce risk to depositors’ federally insured money and prevent more taxpayer bailouts. Banks said the crackdown stifled the competitiveness of the U.S. financial industry.
MARIJUANA: Offers a mixed bag for pot smokers. The bill blocks the Justice Department from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in states that permit them. But it also blocks federal and local spending to legalize marijuana in Washington, D.C., where voters approved recreational use in a November referendum. It’s unclear what the practical effect of the spending ban will be.
PENSIONS: Allows some pension plans to cut benefits promised to current and future retirees. The change is designed to save some financially strapped plans from going broke. It applies to multiemployer plans, which cover more than 10 million people mostly at small, unionized employers, often in the construction business.
CAMPAIGN MONEY: Allows more money to flow into political parties. Under the new rules, each superrich donor could give almost $1.6 million per election cycle to political parties and their campaign committees. The comparable limit for 2014’s elections was $194,400.
THE SAGE GRO– USE: Says “no” to putting the greater sage grouse and three related birds on the endangered species list. Environmentalists say time to save them is running out as their sagebrush habitat disappears. But oil and gas companies and other businesses argued that protecting the chicken-sized birds on Western lands would hurt business and local economies.
LIGHT BULBS: Attempts to switch off federal rules that are making it harder to find old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. The bill extends a ban on the government spending money to enforce the ongoing phase-out of incandescent bulbs. It may not have much effect, since manufacturers and stores are already well-along in the switch to spiral bulbs and other energy-saving alternatives.
HUNTING AND FISHING: Prohibits the EPA from regulating lead in ammunition or fishing tackle. Lead in fishing sinkers and bullet fragments are being blamed for poisoning birds, such as loons and the endangered California condor. Republicans said EPA regulation would be overreach and just the threat of it was making it hard to find bullets in stores.
OFFICIAL PORTRAITS: Continues a ban on spending money on portraits of Cabinet secretaries, Congress members and other big shots, a Washington tradition that some lawmakers felt had gotten out of hand.
THE CAPITOL DOME: Spends $21 million to continue restoration of the leaky, cracked U.S. Capitol dome.
One day after House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi publicly chastised him for supporting the bill, the president said there were provisions “I really do not like.” At the same time, he said there were other portions that “fund health insurance, early childhood education, the fight against climate change, and expand manufacturing hubs to grow jobs.”
He offered his assessment as Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid also announced support for the legislation, further underscoring the split inside the party. The Democrats will lose control of the Senate in January because of heavy losses in midterm elections last month and will go deeper into a House minority than at any time since 1928.
The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans
It’s repetitive for some to hear, but important for everybody to know: You can’t explain Millennial economic behavior without explaining that real wages for young Americans have collapsed.
American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America’s younger workers, “stagnant” wages shouldn’t sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise.
Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care.
A clear symptom of a state in decline; ravaged by high taxes and fiscal policies which erode both opportunity and the quality of life for its residents. https://s.nj.com/IoOo8Fk
N.J. young adults more likely to live with parents, less likely to marry than rest of U.S.
By Stephen Stirling | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
New Jersey’s young adults are better educated than they were 30 years ago, but are earning less and are far more likely to live with their parents than the previous generation, according to new data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The new figures, released as part of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, take a look at the young adult population across the country from a period of 2009 to 2013. They paint a fascinating picture of the state’s rapidly evolving 18 to 34 year-old demographic, one that will likely dictate the future of the Garden State but is still suffering the lingering effects of the Great Recession.
Nearly 30 percent of New Jersey’s 18 to 34 year-olds now hold a Bachelor’s degree, the new data show, compared to 19 percent in 1980 and 22 percent across the rest of the country.
DECEMBER 3, 2014 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2014, 6:13 PM
BY HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
A private sector employment report showing the nation has added jobs at a healthy clip since the start of the year also shows just how far behind New Jersey remains in the economic recovery.
The nation added 208,000 private sector jobs in November, taking the total added to 2.26 million this year, according to the monthly survey released Wednesday by ADP Research Institute, a division of Roseland-based payroll company ADP.
The employment increase of about 2 percent for the year so far, very close to the official government figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the latest evidence that the recovery from the Great Recession is continuing at a good pace.
Meanwhile, New Jersey’s private sector employment has increased by slightly more than a third of that amount – just over 0.7 percent – as several key sectors have lost jobs this year, according to the state’s latest employment report, which covers the year through October. The sectors in which New Jersey’s private employment has fallen this year included construction, manufacturing and leisure and hospitality.
New Jersey lagged in particular in the “goods producing” sector, which has fallen by just over 1.1 percent so far this year, losing about 4,200 jobs, compared to a gain of 1.86 percent nationwide, according to the ADP report.
November Jobs Report Gives Insight into Why Most Americans Think the Economy Is Lousy
James Sherk / @JamesBSherk / December 05, 2014
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November employment report showed solid economic growth, but also provides clues about why many Americans report unhappiness with the economy.
The headline figures contained mostly good news. The household survey reported the unemployment rate remaining flat (5.8 percent) at the lowest rate since July 2008. Labor force participation also remained flat at 62.8 percent as did the employment to population ratio—remaining 59.2 percent, the highest since mid-2009 but well below pre-recession levels.
The average duration of unemployment has remained stubbornly high, rising to 33 weeks in November.
The payroll survey reported employers created 321,000 net new jobs in November—the most in any month since April 2011. The professional and business services (+86,000), retail trade (+50,000), healthcare (+29,000) and food services and drinking places (+27,000) showed the greatest gains. The payroll survey also found the average work hours increasing a tenth of an hour to 34.6 a week—the highest level since early 2008. In more good news, revisions to the September and October surveys showed that employers created 44,000 more jobs those months than previously believed.
Nonetheless, polls suggest that most Americans consider the economy in poor shape. The exit polls from the midterm elections found that 70 percent of voters see America’s economic condition as either “not so good” or “poor.”
Over the past year, average wages have grown by 2.1 percent—only slightly above the rate of inflation.
The November jobs report gives some insight into why. The average duration of unemployment has remained stubbornly high, rising to 33 weeks in November. The median unemployed worker has been looking for work for almost three months—almost twice as long as before the recession hit. Unemployment has become more painful for workers; those who lose their jobs have much greater difficulty finding new ones.
Additionally, average hourly wage growth has slowed to a crawl during the recovery. In November, average wages rose just 9 cents an hour. Over the past year, average wages have grown by 2.1 percent—only slightly above the rate of inflation. Thus, the real buying power of American workers has hardly improved.
This also shows why claims that this represents the strongest economic growth since the tech bubble are misleading. Yes, the economy has added jobs a good pace – welcome news after the deep recession and anemic recovery. But wages grew far faster and the unemployed found jobs far more quickly in the mid-2000s. This does not feel like a booming economy because it is not.
All told, November’s employment report brought welcome news about labor market improvements—but the economy still remains far from a satisfying recovery.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned Monday, becoming the first casualty of the Obama administration since Democrats suffered significant losses in this month’s midterm elections.
Hagel, the only Republican in Obama’s cabinet, was brought to the Pentagon to reduce budgets and wind down the war in Afghanistan.
His departure comes as the White House faces criticism over its handling of a new terrorist threat — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and questions had been raised about whether Hagel was the right man for that job.
Obama announced Hagel’s departure in a White House ceremony were he was flanked by Hagel and Vice President Biden. He hailed Hagel as an “exemplary defense secretary” who had put the military “on a firmer footing.”
“I’ve known him admired him and trusted him for nearly a decade,” said Obama, who then added that Hagel had decided “it was an appropriate time for him to conclude his service.”
A senior administration official said the two had been discussing the possible transition since October. The president plans to nominate a successor shortly, but Hagel said he would remain in the post until that person is confirmed by the Senate.
Hagel, clearly emotional, said the “greatest privilege” of his career was leading the men and women of the Pentagon.
For responding to a president who defies his constitutional limits, Congress is said to possess four powers: to impeach, to defund, to investigate, and to withhold confirmation of nominees.
But there is a fifth recourse, which the new Republican Congress might consider in view of President Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal immigrants: the power to censure. In fact, censure could work in tandem with Congress’s other powers, helping the legislature make the moral case for responding to the president’s lawlessness.
Presidential censure is a rare occurrence. Most notably, in 1834, the Whig-controlled Senate censured President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, for moving federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States to local banks, derisively called his “pets” because most were operated by loyal Democrats.
Jackson’s legal justification was dubious at best. Under the law, only the secretary of the Treasury could initiate such a transfer, and then only if the funds were deemed insecure. But the Bank had been impeccably run since Nicholas Biddle became its president in 1822. An investigation had ascertained that the funds were perfectly safe, and the House had voted overwhelmingly to affirm that fact. Treasury Secretary William Duane, moreover, refused to remove the money or to step down so Jackson could install somebody who would. Jackson fired Duane, replacing him with Roger Taney without Senate confirmation. Taney’s cronies would go on to grossly mismanage funds in Jackson’s pet bank in Baltimore.
Richard Wolf, USA TODAY6:42 p.m. EST November 22, 2014
WASHINGTON — The most serious challenge to President Obama’s health care law since it survived the Supreme Court by a single vote in 2012 isn’t a balky website, public opinion or the Republican takeover of Congress. It’s the Supreme Court — again.
In a case likely to be heard in March and decided in June, the justices will dissect the meaning of four words on page 95 of the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — four words that could render health insurance premiums unaffordable for millions of Americans.
Here’s a look at the issues in King v. Burwell:
Question: Why the fuss over four words?
Answer: The law states that tax credits will be available through so-called exchanges, or online marketplaces, “established by the State.” When it was being crafted, it was assumed that all 50 states would create their own exchanges. After it passed in March 2010, it became clear that many states would rely on the federal government to operate them, as the law allows.
In 2012, the Internal Revenue Service made the subsidies available in all states. The law’s challengers claim they cannot be offered in exchanges operated by the federal government. Thirty-six states fit into that category. Without subsidies, insurance costs would skyrocket.
Q: What’s more important — the plain meaning of those words, or the context?
A: That depends on whom you ask. The challengers say the plain meaning is clear: Subsidies can be offered only in state exchanges. If that’s what Congress wrote, they say, the Supreme Court cannot change it, and the IRS cannot extend tax credits to federal exchange customers.
The administration and other proponents say the words must be read in the context of a law clearly intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable. Even the suspect words appear in a subtitle of the law that reads, “Affordable Coverage Choices for All Americans.”
Under Obama, U.S. personal freedom ranking slips below France
BY JASON RUSSELL | NOVEMBER 18, 2014 | 12:48 PM
Americans’ assessments of their personal freedom have significantly declined under President Obama, according to a new study from the Legatum Institute in London, and the United States now ranks below 20 other countries on this measure.
The research shows that citizens of countries including France, Uruguay, and Costa Rica now feel that they enjoy more personal freedom than Americans.
As the Washington Examiner reported this morning, representatives of the Legatum Institute are in the U.S. this week to promote the sixth edition of their Prosperity Index. The index aims to measure aspects of prosperity that typical gross domestic product measurements don’t include, such as entrepreneurship and opportunity, education, and social capital.
Americans Trust Government Less and Less Because We Know More and More About How It Operates
Nick Gillespie|Nov. 16, 2014 10:09 am
Fifty years ago, FBI operatives sent Martin Luther King, Jr. was has come to be known as the “suicide letter,” an anonymous note suggesting the civil rights leader should off himself before his private sex life was made public. The information about King’s extramarital assignations was gathered with the approval not just of the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover but Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson.
“There is but one way out for you,” reads the note, which appeared in unredacted form for the first time just last week. “You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
Thus is revealed one of the most despicable acts of domestic surveillance in memory. These days, we worry less about the government outing our sex lives than in it tracking every move we move online. It turns out that President Obama, who said he would roll back the unconstitutional powers exercised by his predecessor, had a secret “kill list” over which he was sole authority. Jesus, we’ve just learned that small planes are using so-called dirtboxes to pick up cell phone traffic. One of the architects of Obamacare publicly states that Americans are stupid and that the president’s healthcare reform was vague and confusing on purpose. The former director of national intelligence, along with the former head and current heads of the CIA, have lied to Congress.
Obamnomics ,Giving Up in America : 40% Women, 28% Men, 39% Youth Don’t Want A Job
(Washington Examiner) – Nearly four in 10 Americans, or 92 million, are not in the labor force and now there’s a reason why: They have simply given up and don’t want to work.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest group of people not in the labor force are those who don’t want a job, a remarkable statement on the nation’s work ethic. The federal job counter said that 85.9 million adults last month didn’t want a job, or 93 percent of all adults not in the labor force.
A Pew Research Center analysis out Friday dug a bit deeper to find out who those people are. Many are younger Americans who seem far less interested it landing a job than previous generations, possibly discouraged by the lack of good-paying jobs.
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Pew said that 39 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds don’t want to work, up from 29 percent in 2000.
Women especially don’t want a job, but men have similar feelings.
“Women are more likely than men to say they don’t want a job, although the gap has been narrowing — especially since the Great Recession. Last month, 28.5 percent of men said they didn’t want a job, up from 23.9 percent in October 2000 and 25.2 percent in October 2008. For women, the share saying they didn’t want a job hovered around 38 percent throughout the 2000s but began creeping up in 2010, reaching 40.2 percent last month,” said the Pew analysis.
