Commentary Please forgive me for not watching the State of the Union address last night. There is only so much phony baloney I can stand, and I knew in advance that it was going to be a lot of blather about how great the economy is based on the unemployment rate. The thing is that…

Commentary The Biden administration’s main talking point against the existence of recession is the unemployment rate. Sadly, a “rate” never hired or paid anyone. In the real world, there are signs of growing strains once you disaggregate the data by income expectations, gender, and other factors. There is no shortage of jobs available in lower-wage…

News analysis For most of these last 100 years, unemployment has been an obsession of both economists and government. This is because it has usually been a reliable marker in the business cycle. In good times, the rate falls and in bad times it rises. This pattern has often led to a goofy conflation of…

News analysis An insurance company has done a survey to answer a fascinating question: what percent of U.S. workers hold a second job to generate income separate from their main income stream? They surveyed 1,000 people and came up with a surprising answer: 93 percent. You are probably nodding your head right now because it…