Spilling The Beans — You Didn’t Buy the Stupid Rogue Low Level Employees Crap ?

IRS EMPLOYEES: Carter Hull in Washington Was Calling The Shots On Tea Party Harassment.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed transcripts of Congressional investigations, and puts the final nail in the coffin for the “low-level employees” dodge — and names at least one name:

Two Internal Revenue Service employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office told congressional investigators that IRS officials in Washington helped direct the probe of tea-party groups that began in 2010.

Transcripts of the interviews, viewed Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, appear to contradict earlier statements by top IRS officials, who have blamed lower-level workers in Cincinnati.

Elizabeth Hofacre said her office in Cincinnati sought help from IRS officials in the Washington unit that oversees tax-exempt organizations after she started getting the tea-party cases in April 2010. Ms. Hofacre said Carter Hull, an IRS lawyer in Washington, closely oversaw her work and suggested some of the questions asked applicants.

“I was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or input,” she said, according to the transcripts.

Mr. Hull could not be reached for comment.

P2P Drops In May According To GALLUP

As the world waits breathless for some Goldilocks print in tomorrow’s non-farm payroll data, Gallup’s most recent survey of employment trends does not paint a pretty picture for the real economy. Though, by the ‘adjustment bureau’ and their Arima-X goal-seeking, nothing is ever clear, not only is the payroll-to-population (the number of people working) worse than a year ago but the unemployment rate is also rising with under-employment – at 18.0% – near 15 month highs. If the NFP print plays out in line with this, the estimate of 165k will be woefully over-optimistic, leaving the question of whether bad-is-good, or have we crossed the Rubicon of belief in moar is better.’

The U.S. Payroll to Population employment rate (P2P), as measured by Gallup, worsened in May, dropping to 43.9%, from 44.5% in April. P2P is also down from May 2012, when it was 44.4%

The decline in P2P versus 2012 indicates that fewer people worked full-time for an employer this May compared with a year ago. The 43.9% found this May is similar to the 43.7% recorded in 2011 and 44.0% in 2010.

Gallup’s P2P metric is an estimate of the percentage of the U.S. adult population aged 18 and older who are employed full time by an employer for at least 30 hours per week. P2P is not seasonally adjusted.

Manipulated Recovery? Non-Farm Payrolls Leap +165k Thanks To BLS Birth/Death Adjustment Of +193k

Another month another manipulated set of data, from your government. Why can’t they just tell the truth?

Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.

Bad News! It had to be helped by a 193,000 increase due to the BLS Birth/Death adjustment. That is a net LOSS of 28,000 jobs! And 9.55 million Americans have given up looking for work. Not to mention 89,936,000 NOT in the labor force.

Nothing is real anymore… Just fiddled numbers for the headline.

Dark Side to Jobs Report: Big Drop in Hours Worked (Equivalent to 500,000 jobs lost!)

Well it had to sink in before they put it out. If you didn’t buy the myth of today’s jobs report, Yipee the unemployment rate went down, Oops —  this should wake you up.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The April employment report exceeded expectations, with 165,000 jobs created and a welcome drop in the unemployment rate to 7.5%.

But there was a dark side to the report: Total hours worked fell sharply, and the total amount of money earned by U.S. workers actually declined from the month before.

“Aggregate weekly hours”….  As the name implies, it measures the total number of hours worked, which is what matters for sizing up overall growth in the economy.

Usually, we focus just on the number of new jobs created and the unemployment rate, but the number of hours we work matters just as much, if not more, to our economic well-being.

Hours worked in April fell 0.4%, equivalent to the loss of more than 500,000 jobs.

Hours worked in April fell 0.4%, equivalent to the loss of more than 500,000 jobs.

Read more at marketwatch.com …

Taking government numbers at face value is like telling yourself it looks and sounds like a rattlesnake, but it couldn’t really be one because it’s too friendly.

 

Poll: Nearly half of US college grads are underemployed

Maybe you should have studied in a course plan that leads to a marketable career.

NEW YORK – More than 40 percent of recent U.S. college graduates are underemployed or need more training to get on a career track, a poll released Tuesday showed.

The online survey of 1,050 workers who finished school in the past two years and 1,010 who will receive their degree in 2013 also found that many graduates, some heavily in debt because of the cost of their education, say they are in jobs that do not require a college degree.

Thirty-four percent said they had student loans of $30,000 or less, while 17 percent owed between $30,000 to $50,000.

…..

Nearly half, 42 percent, of recent graduates expect they will need an advanced degree to further their career and almost a quarter are already planning to take graduate courses.

More than half of graduates said it was difficult finding a job, but 39 percent were employed by the time they left college. Sixty eight percent said they are working full time, while 16 percent are in part-time positions.

Read more at nbcnews.com …

ADP: Private Employers Add Just 119K in April

Ugh!!! Not keeping up with birthrates.

A survey shows U.S. companies added the fewest jobs in seven months.

April low...

Payroll processor ADP(the payroll people) says private employers added just 119,000 jobs last month.

March revise down…

And March’s hiring was slower than first thought: the survey shows just 131,000 added, down from an initial estimate of 158,000.

Manufacturers cut 10,000 jobs, while construction firms added 15,000.

“The ADP number was disappointing. It suggests that the job market and the economy more broadly are slowing going into the spring and summer,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, which coproduces the report, in a call with reporters on Wednesday.

The ADP report is derived from payroll data and tracks private employment each month.

Take that — Honey, I shrank the economy.

Old vs Young Workers … AMNESTY Just Make Things Worse For The Young Workers

Yes most illegals have no education, but it erodes the overall labor pool available for the young, and reduces salaries for all.

Nearly half, 42 percent, of recent graduates expect they will need an advanced degree to further their career and almost a quarter are already planning to take graduate courses. More degrees, more debt, more dead end opportunities for a generation that is stuck in place not because it is underqualified, but because of barriers to entry erected by those already in the workforce, especially those aged 55 and over who courtesy of Bernanke’s ZIRP4EVA can’t afford to retire, and who as the following chart shows are employed more now than ever. The losers: those aged 20-24 whose employment level has not budged in the past four decades despite a demographic boom that puts millions more into precisely this age cohort with every passing year. Where are those who are not in the labor force (and not playing Call of Duty)?

Why in college of course.

Young vs Older workers

More from Reuters:

 ”For our nation’s youngest workers, as well as for the workforce at large, there is a real need for employers to reexamine how they hire, train and develop their employees,” said Katherine Lavelle, of the global management consulting firm Accenture, which conducted the survey.

More than half of graduates said it was difficult finding a job, but 39 percent were employed by the time they left college. Sixty eight percent said they are working full time, while 16 percent are in part-time positions.

The top industries that graduates wanted to work in were education, media and entertainment and healthcare.

Just over half, 53 percent, of graduates found full-time jobs in their field of study.

In addition to being underemployed many graduates thought they would have done better in the job market if they had studied a different major, and more than half also intended to go back to school within the next five years.

The biggest disappointment: the difference between perceptions about wage potential and reality.

 The survey uncovered a gap between what students expect to earn in their first job and their actual salary. Only 15 percent of this year’s graduates think they will earn less than $25,000 but a third of recent graduates said they make that amount or less.

Will any of this change the sad reality where even the hope of a lucrative future for most involves drowning in debt? Of course not. After all in the new normal, “money dilution is prosperity” and “debt is wealth.” If this is the case for sovereign nations and corporations, why not for the individual as well. Because it is not as if anyone expects any of the record outstanding debt to ever be repaid.

NATION’S LARGEST THEATER SLASHES HOURS FOR THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES, BLAMES ‘OBAMACARE’

Lesson for the low information voters … nothing in life is free, no matter who tries to tell you it is.

Regal Entertainment Group, the nation’s largest movie theater chain, cut the hours of thousands of non-salaried employees — and now the company explains that it’s in preparation for implementation of the Affordable Care Act (i.e. “Obamacare”).

Regal Entertainment Group sent a memo to managers saying the move was a result of the Affordable Care Act. The company operates more than 500 theaters in 38 states.

Last month, Regal rolled back shifts for non-salaried workers to 30 hours a week, putting them just under the threshold at which employers are required to provide health insurance.

Regal sent out this memo to managers of their theaters:

 ”To comply with the Affordable Care Act, Regal had to increase our health care budget to cover those newly deemed eligible based on the law’s definition of a full time employee. To manage this budget, all other employees will be scheduled in accord with business needs and in a manner that will not negatively impact our health care budget.”

Reality Of Long Term Unemployment

The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment.

“There are now two labor markets. There’s the market for people who have been out of work for less than six months, and the market for people who have been out of work longer. The former is working pretty normally, and the latter is horribly dysfunctional.”

CVS PHARMACY ASKS EMPLOYEES TO WEIGH IN OR PAY FINE

CVS announced to its employees recently in a memo a new protocol that asked them to submit health information or pay a fine on insurance. (Photo: AP/Wilfredo Lee)

A new policy for employees of CVS Pharmacy will have them reporting their weight, body fat and other health metrics — or they can pay a fine that could add up to $600 each year. Privacy advocates are not happy about it.

 According to the Boston Herald, Dr. Deborah Peel, founder of the advocacy group Patient Privacy Rights, said the increasing cost of health care will only make policies like this more common.

“Rising health care costs are killing the economy, and businesses are terrified,” Peel said. “Now, we’re all in this terrible situation where employers are desperate to get rid of workers who have costly health conditions, like obesity and diabetes.”

To ABC’s Good Morning America, Peel called the practice “technology-enhanced discrimination on steroids.”

According to reports, the new policy requires employees of the pharmacy to have a doctor record their weight, height, body fat, blood pressure, blood glucose and other measurement by May 1, 2014. If the employee opts out of providing this information, they would be fined an additional $50 each month for insurance, adding up to $600 per year. The Boston Herald reported CVS saying it would pay for these evaluations.

Video here …