By Rick Manning Yay, the unemployment rate is down to 4.7 percent. Boo, the labor participation rate dropped precipitously and is at historically low-levels. So, what does the May jobs report mean?  Is the economy finally getting better and moving off the sluggish cycle it has been stuck in for six […]

By Robert Romano An average, record 56 million working age adults aged 16 to 64 are not in the labor force in 2016, an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows . That is to say, they are neither working nor looking for work. The non-participating 56 million accounts for 27.1 percent of the working […]

By Robert Romano The problem with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement isn’t that it is free trade, it is that it is not. You cannot have free trade when even after a trade agreement goes into effect and tariffs are supposedly reduced many of our trading […]

By Don Todd Fast Food Forward, an advocacy organization, makes an eloquent emotional plea for the wellbeing of restaurant workers: “In America, people who work hard should be able to afford basic necessities like groceries, rent, childcare and transportation.”  Who can argue with that? Similarly The Fight for Fifteen organization comes up with this argument, “ We Work, We Sweat, Put $15 on Our Check !” How […]

By Robert Romano “While I would not completely rule out the use of negative interest rates in some future very adverse scenario, policymakers would need to consider a wide range of issues before employing this tool in the United States, including the potential for unintended consequences.” That was Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen in a letter to […]

By Robert Romano “[W]e are not going to get back to 3 percent [growth] with anything we know how to do now.” That was former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf, ominously warning that the 15-year slowdown of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — wherein the […]

By Robert Romano Global trade is collapsing. In March, the U.S. trade deficit took a big hit, dropping 13.8 percent amid an $8 billion contraction in imports and a $2 billion shrinking of exports, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau . That’s usually not a good sign, U.S. Commerce Department data shows. Narrowing […]

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By Robert Romano First quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is in, and well, the U.S. economy still stinks, growing at a paltry, inflation-adjusted rate of just 0.5 percent annualized . Unsurprisingly, the lack of growth falls well below the already dreary Federal Reserve expectations for 2016, which is projected in December 2.4 percent for the year. Which still […]

By Robert Romano Lewis Lehrman and John Mueller had a very interesting oped on exporters that use currency devaluation to boost exports, “Monetary reform or trade war,” and how Congress might deal with it in the future — without resorting to tariffs. In it, Lehrman and Mueller call for G-20 economies including […]