Commentary Total nonfarm payroll employment, relased this morning, increased by 209,000 in June, and the unemployment rate changed little at 3.6 percent. Just 149,000 of those jobs were in the private sector; 60,000 were in government. Revisions from April and May resulted in 110,000 fewer jobs than originally reported for those two months. That’s the…

As more than 120,000 federal public servants across the country prepare for a potential strike, their union is asking for non-wage benefits such as employer contributions to its Social Justice Fund, mandatory diversity and inclusion training, and shift premiums for working past 4 p.m. On April 12, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) announced that its…

Home Depot Inc. said Tuesday it will spend $1 billion more in annualized compensation for its frontline hourly workers in the United States and Canada. The Atlanta-based home improvement chain said every hourly employee will get a raise starting this month. Starting pay will be at least $15 per hour. Wells Fargo analysts, however, said…

Positive jobs reports can be bad news for the market. The latest strong jobs report, for example, revived Wall Street fears of continued inflation and a more aggressive Federal Reserve as markets were volatile on the news. Stocks opened lower following the jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with a brief rally…

Commentary The January jobs report Establishment Survey showed that the economy added 517,000 new jobs, wildly beyond the consensus estimate of  185,000 jobs. Net revisions for November and Decembber resulted in an additional 71,000 more jobs for the last three months. (It is generally believed that 200,000–250,000 jobs are required to accommodate population growth.) The…

Californian citizens are set to vote on a proposal next year that seeks to improve the working conditions and raise wages of fast-food workers across the state, a measure that has attracted strong opposition from businesses in the sector. Assembly Bill (AB) 257, also known as the FAST Recovery Act, proposed raising the minimum wages…

Walmart, the largest U.S. employer, said Tuesday it is raising its starting hourly wages starting in February, according to a news release. In a statement to employees, Walmart CEO John Furner stated that “starting next month, we’ll begin investing in higher wages for associates.” “This includes a mixture of associates’ regular annual increases and targeted investments…

Large groups of workers staged protests on Jan. 7 at a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Chongqing, a megacity in the southwest of China. The protests erupted after thousands of workers were abruptly laid off by Zybio, Inc., a manufacturer of COVID-19 test kits. Videos posted online show angry workers demolishing boxes of COVID-19 test kits,…

Worries about inflation weighed on Wall Street Friday, leaving major indexes mixed after a report showed wages for U.S. workers are accelerating, which is good news for them but could feed into even higher inflation for the nation. The S&P 500 ended 0.1 percent lower after having been down as much as 1.2 percent earlier in…

Millions of Americans are working at side hustles or gig jobs due to economic challenges over the past two and a half years, according to recent survey by workforce service platform Bluecrew. As unemployment rates began to recover from the pandemic and Americans returned to work, inflation rates began to soar to the highest level in…