The FED Said By many measures, the U.S. labor market is humming. The unemployment rate is the lowest since 2000. Nonfarm payroll employment has increased every month for more than seven years.  Nevertheless, prosperity is bypassing large groups. For example, the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in the labor force but living below the […] Read more

Harvard Business Review In 2016 John Stumpf, then the CEO of Wells Fargo, was called before Congress to explain a massive scandal. For more than four hours, Stumpf fielded a range of questions about why the bank, which had over $1.8 trillion in assets, had created 2 million false accounts, and, after the fraud was discovered, […] Read more

The FED Said In a recent post, we described the outlook for housing growth in the Atlanta Fed’s district as “slow and steady.” In this post, we look at what other Fed districts are hearing about housing growth and attempt to reconcile those anecdotes with recent signs from the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow. The most recent Beige Book  characterized […] Read more

From Harvard Business Review The subject of sexual misconduct at work is dominating mainstream conversation and board room agendas. This doesn’t just mean men and women who run large global enterprises, Fortune 500 behemoths, film studios, and media platforms. The conversation is happening in small businesses as well. In the U.S. 43% of employees work in organizations with 50 […] Read more

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Summary of Economic Activity Sixth District business contacts remained largely positive with most noting that economic conditions were improving at a modest pace over the reporting period. Most contacts expect continued slow and steady growth in the near-term. Business contacts experienced on-going labor market tightness but limited wage growth. Non-labor […] Read more

The FED Said In 2017, the unemployment rate averaged 4.4 percent. That’s quite low on a historical basis. In fact, it’s the lowest level since 2000, when unemployment averaged 4.0 percent. But does that mean that the labor market is only 0.4 percentage points away from being as strong as it was in 2000? Probably […] Read more

Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his platform needs to change. Community feedback has shown that public content has been “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” according to Zuckerberg. As a result, the company says it will be focusing more on promoting posts from friends rather than from […] Read more

The FED Said  During six weeks of the holiday season, Geodis Contract Logistics of Brentwood, Tennessee, fulfilled about a million electronic commerce orders a day. From its 130-plus warehouses, the firm aims to ship every ecommerce order as quickly as possible, said Scott McWilliams, Geodis’s executive vice president of strategic development and a former member […] Read more

Harvard Business Review The vast majority of humans throughout history worked because they had to. Many found comfort, value, and meaning in their efforts, but some defined work as a necessity to be avoided if possible. For centuries, elites in societies from Europe to Asia aspired to absolution from gainful employment. Aristotle defined a “man […] Read more

The FED Said Speech by Raphael Bostic President and Chief Executive Officer Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta To the Rotary Club of Atlanta January 8, 2018 Summary Atlanta Fed president and CEO Raphael Bostic offers his economic outlook in a speech to the Rotary Club of Atlanta on January 8, 2018. He also addresses the […] Read more

The FED Said One element that has distinguished the expansion following the Great Recession from expansions following prior recessions is the slow recovery of the housing sector. Recent data releases relating to home sales activity and new construction point to a housing market that continues to grow at a slow but steady pace. Single-family starts […] Read more

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Summary of Economic Activity Reports from Sixth District business contacts described economic conditions as modestly improving since the previous report. Most businesses continue to expect slow and steady growth for the remainder of the year. District firms continued to describe a tight labor market as many faced difficulty finding workers. […] Read more

Not wage disparity, wage displacement … —- St. Pete passes ordinance to combat wage theft | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune http://tbo.com/pinellas-county/st-pete-passes-ordinance-to-combat-wage-theft-20150416/?page=1 —- Shared via my feedly reader