Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would increase the price of a $16 product at Walmart, such as the typical DVD, by just a cent if all of the extra costs were passed on to consumers, according to an analysis by an economist for Bloomberg News. [...]
Walmart is denying a Bloomberg report that said the nation's largest private employer is considering supporting an increase in the minimum wage.
"We are not at all considering this," Walmart spokesman David Tovar told The Huffington Post Wednesday afternoon, just after Bloomberg published the story. [...]
Walmart currently does not support raising the federal minimum wage. However, considering the company's lackluster performance over the past few months, perhaps it's time to take a stand.
The odds that Republican House Speaker John Boehner will allow a vote on raising the minimum wage remain as low as ever, but some large retailers are already raising the wage on their own initiative. On Wednesday, clothing chain Gap Inc. announced it would be raising its base wage from $9 to $10 per hour next year, directly benefiting as much as 72% of its hourly workforce.
"No one who works full-time should have to raise their children in poverty," Senator Barbara Boxer said. She was talking about raising the minimum wage during aspeech to the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition to citing the moral reason the federal minimum wage deserves a second look, she also made an economic argument. "When working people have a little more in their paychecks, they spend a little more in their communities. So that's what we're trying to do," she added.
Economist Kenneth Boulding famously said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” But it's not just economists who believe that anymore. Such ideas are still widely accepted by thought leaders, journalists, and politicians who, together, form a strong consensus that the U.S. recovery should be bolstered by natural gas exploration and production.
Anyone wearing an "assistant manager" name tag knows that the job carries a nice title but doesn't necessarily come with commensurate pay.
One of the biggest issues for assistant managers and other white-collar workers is unpaid overtime. That's because those employees are often expected to work 60 or 70 hours a week, pushing their pay down to minimum-wage level once all their hours are included.
Roughly half of all U.S. families have no money set aside for retirement, Federal Reserve data show. Not a cent. But even that alarming savings deficit doesn't fully capture the emerging socioeconomic crisis facing what is, after all, a rapidly graying nation. [...]
And, says Anastasia Christman of the National Employment Law Project, "his focus on putting young people to work is critical for communities of color." The plan contains funding for summer job and youth work programs.
In their new book, "Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone," Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman argue that the United States needs to worry about not just creating millions more jobs but also ensuring that the jobs are good ones.
Saira Malik, Nuveen CIO, Jason Furman, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and former CEA chair, Tyler Goodspeed, Cato Institute adjunct scholar and former acting CEA chairman, and Angela Hanks, chief of programs at Demos, join CNBC's 'Squawk Box' to react to September's key jobs report.
"Supporting year-round civic engagement provides an entry point for communities to begin to engage more intentionally with the political system at the local, state, and federal levels."
Chief of Programs at Demos, Angela Hanks on Black employment in this jobs report, wage growth, and the Fed rate hike - what damage that could do to the economy.
Dēmos strongly supports updating federal regulations to restore and extend overtime protections. However, we urge the Department to finalize a stronger rule than the one proposed.
The resumption of student loan payments after a three-year break, is likely to deliver a blow to American economic growth, according to economists, in a move that could harm many beyond borrowers alone.