PODCAST: All you can eat and the September jobs sheet
U.S. employers added 114,000 jobs in September. The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent, the same place it was when President Obama took office. On both counts, the numbers surpassed economists’ expectations. Presidential economic adviser Alan Krueger and Romney adviser Glenn Hubbard share their reactions to this morning’s jobs report.
Along with September’s employment report, the Labor Department also revised up job gains August and July. In August, in particular they now say the economy added 50 percent more jobs than the original estimate. The markets are happy, but there are some sobering details behind the headline jobs numbers. The unemployment rates for blacks, hispanics, and young people were unchanged, while there were job gains in industries like health care and transportation, manufacturing jobs declined. And, the number of Americans working “part time for economic reasons” rose more than seven percent.
The online game maker Zynga is facing an ugly stock price this morning. Shares are down almost 20 percent in the first hours of trading. After the company slashed its financial outlook — people are not playing those Zynga games like it had forecast. Meanwhile, Samsung says its profits were up 85 percent last quarter compared with a year ago, thanks largely to strong sales of its galaxy smartphone.
From closed-down steel mills to the sprawling modern Cleveland Clinic, Ohio’s economic past, present, and future is a window into the state of our nation. The Big Fun Toy Store, in the suburb of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, is a small business that has dealt with the ups and downs of the state’s economy over the last several years.
I’m not sure if this is a pick-me-up or depressing, but in another sign of the times the Wall Street Journal today launched its weekly “Mansion” section. An entire 16-page section, every week, devoted to the opulent homes of the fabulously wealthy. Today’s debut kicks off with a spread on the four homes of the poet Maya Angelou.
Finally, if you’ve ever wondered whether “all you can eat” is really, literally true, two men in the UK pushed it to the limit and found out. The Telegraph reports a Mongolian barbeque in Brighton banned two very regular customers for life, calling them “pigs” and accusing them of eating the business into the ground.
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