employees

U.S. Multinationals Were Hiring Like Mad in 2011...Abroad

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U.S. multinational corporations were actually hiring in 2011 as they were in 2010.  Unfortunately as in 2010, they are hiring abroad.  In an updated BEA summary on sales, investment and employment by Multinational Corporations for 2011, we have a 0.1% increase in hiring for jobs in the United States while MNCs increased their hiring abroad by 4.4%.

July 2011 Employment Disappoints But Stops Chicken Little in His Tracks

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The July unemployment report is yet another disappointment, with not enough jobs to keep up with population growth. The jobs situation has been dismal for 43 months or over three and a half years. Yet those thinking Economic Armageddon Redux was suddenly upon us, literally crashing the BLS server to get the news, were sorely mistaken.

Earlier we reviewed the July 2011 BLS employment ratios. While not the Armageddon Wall Street was expecting, it's clear the job crisis has not dissipated. Both June and May new jobs numbers were revised upward, but not enough.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised from +25,000 to +53,000, and the change for June was revised from +18,000 to +46,000.

Let's drill down deeper into the numbers to show just how badly America needs good jobs.

There are 13,931,000 people officially unemployed, and if one takes the alternative measure of unemployment, it's 24.7 million.

Obama to Freeze Federal Employee's Pay for 2 Years

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Surely this is a Populist move. The Obama administration is planning on Ordering Pay Freezes for Federal Workers.

The president’s proposal will effectively wipe out plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million civilian federal government employees, including those working at the Defense Department, but the freeze would not affect the nation’s uniformed military personnel. The president has frozen the salaries of his own top White House staff members since taking office 22 months ago.

The pay freeze will save $2 billion in the current fiscal year that ends in September 2011, $28 billion over five years and more than $60 billion over 10 years, officials said.

Federal employees only make up about 2-3% of the total workforce. There was a USA Today article which got people's panties get all in a bunch about the low unemployment rate and much better pay for Federal employees versus private ones.

Some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president's plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.

It seems this move by the Obama administration is to head 'em off at the pass. This stops the GOP wanting to make this an issue as well as avoids a 10% pay cut for Federal Employees. Instead of course, doing something to raise the pay of the private sector.

Here are some statistics from the USA Today article:

Worker Costs for March 2010

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The March 2010 employee costs report was released today. The average wage is $20.67/hr. Benefits costs average $9.71/hr. This brings wages and benefits employer costs to a whopping total (sic) of $29.71/hr. Believe this or not, state and local government workers are the last holdouts in terms of getting good benefits.

Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.73 per hour worked in March 2010.