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China finds 170 more tons of tainted milk powder

February 8, 2010 | Author: admin

CARA ANNA, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – The discovery has punched a 170-ton hole in China’s promises to overhaul its food safety system. Officials say they’ve found yet another case where large amounts of tainted milk powder from the country’s 2008 scandal that should have been destroyed were instead repackaged.

China ordered tens of thousands of milk products laced with an industrial chemical burned or buried after more than 300,000 children were sickened and at least six died from the contamination. But, crucially, the government did not carry out the eradication itself, and this month an emergency crackdown has made it clear that tons of compromised products are still on the market.

Tainted dairy has recently been found in China’s largest city, Shanghai, and in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shandong, Liaoning, Guizhou, Jilin and Hebei. At least five companies are suspected of reselling tainted products that should have been destroyed, the Health Ministry said last week. The problem products uncovered in the 10-day emergency crackdown have so far been limited to the domestic market.

The campaign is set to end Wednesday, and it’s not clear whether it will be extended. The country’s biggest holiday, the Lunar New Year, starts this weekend, and already some offices are closing and millions of people are going on vacation.

The Health Ministry has not commented since the crackdown began, and the China Dairy Association has remained quiet as well.

“The problem is, this is a product with a shelf life of several years. It’s very important that the product is not left unattended,” said Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO senior scientist on food safety based in Beijing. “There’s always a risk it will find a way back into the system.”

The latest discovery underscores the difficulties of policing China’s smaller food producers, despite a sweeping new food safety law that took effect last summer and promised stricter quality controls after the 2008 scandal, which was China’s worst food safety crisis in years.

In the wake of that crisis, China punished dozens of officials, dairy executives and farmers, even executing a dairy farmer and a milk salesman. But the government didn’t destroy seized products itself. Instead, it issued guidelines on how to destroy them, suggesting they be burned in large-capacity incinerators or that small amounts be buried in landfills.

In the southern city of Guangzhou, however, the local government did take over disposal after one garbage company poured tainted milk into a city river.

China’s new food safety law places even more responsibility on food producers to ensure their products are safe, including introducing tough new penalties for makers of unsafe products.

On Monday, with the announcement that more products contaminated by the industrial chemical melmine had been found, it appeared the new regulations had failed again. Officials issued a recall for more than 170 tons of milk powder tainted by the industrial chemical melamine and closed two dairy companies in the northern region of Ningxia, the China Daily newspaper reported.

The report said officials have already seized 72 tons of the powder but were still looking for the rest, which had been sold by the Ningxia Tiantian Dairy Co. Ltd. to five factories in the neighboring region of Inner Mongolia and the bustling southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.

The report said the tainted powder should have been destroyed in the 2008 scandal, but that an unnamed company gave it to Ningxia Tiantian as a debt payment.

Zhao Shuming, secretary-general of the Ningxia Dairy Industry Association, told the China Daily that said Ningxia Tiantian appears to have been unaware the product contained melamine but should have known that the repackaging itself, which usually involves changing production and sell-by dates, was illegal.

Zhao told the paper that many small dairies, including Ningxia Tiantian, don’t have the technology to even test for melamine. When watered-down milk is laced with the chemical, it appears to still be rich in protein in quality tests that measure nitrogen, found in both the melamine and protein.

“Flaws in the previous system led to the current chaos. What if companies with tainted milk also hold back their stocks for this round of checkups and reuse them later, just like what’s happening now?” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Zhao spoke more carefully Monday, telling the AP, “We have strict checks, and our client companies have strict checks, too.”

Ningxia Tiantian has been shut down, and a second company, Ningxia Panda Dairy Co. Ltd., was also ordered closed because of ties to a Shanghai dairy found with tainted goods last year, the report said.

Online Chinese chat rooms were buzzing Monday over the latest tainted milk finding, with many asking “Why are these things happening again?”

But a large-scale drop in consumer confidence that happened in the 2008 scandal isn’t likely this time, said Cindy Yang, a dairy analyst for the Netherlands-based Rabobank Group in Shanghai.

“These companies are quite small ones,” she said Monday, adding that China’s largest dairies put stricter safety measures in place after feeling the bite of bad publicity — and raised prices 20 to 30 percent to pay for the better quality.

“You can’t say that because of these cases, there’s no trust in the whole market,” she said.

Posted in Children, China, Food, Tainted Products | Leave a Comment

XLERATOR hand dryer is MADE IN USA Certified

February 7, 2010 | Author: admin

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Posted in USA-C | Leave a Comment

Where Jobs Are Likely to Grow And Decline This Year

February 5, 2010 | Author: admin

cnbc

Health-care and consumer-services jobs will lead a slow jobs recovery this year, but overall employment will be kept in check by continued declines in local government and construction jobs, economists say.

Indeed, where the jobs aren’t could be just as important as where they are as the critically important employment picture begins clearing up.

The government on Friday issued a mixed bag of news that shows pockets of strength amid an overall loss of 20,000 positions in the US economy.

“It really comes down to the services-providing sectors to give us job gains,” said Zach Pandl, economist at Nomura Securities in New York. “The question is, when are we going to see a turnaround in service-sector jobs beyond temporary hiring? We think we’re pretty close.”

Service-sector positions-which include everything from retail sales clerks to restaurant workers-traditionally lead the market and are looked to for signs that consumer demand is increasing.

Federal government jobs also are expected to give a boost to the payroll numbers in the next month or two, though some economists expected that Census hiring would push January’s numbers into positive job growth. The government hired about 9,000 Census workers during the month.

By the same token, Census hiring is short-term and likely unable to offset a general trend of losses in the public sector as local and state governments struggle to pay their bills.

“The job creation that we’re going to see from Census workers isn’t something we’re going to be proud of,” said Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors. “It’s not sustainable and it’s not viable. What we need are dramatic tax cuts…to encourage the private sector to hire people.”

Pento is among experts who see bad times ahead for the jobs market that will lead to another leg down in the recession-the double-dip or W-shaped recovery to which some economists refer.

Pockets of hope conflicted with more troubling signs as investors sorted out the report. Markets were down Friday afternoon in choppy trading.

Optimists saw the total jobless rate falling to 9.7 percent and growth among temporary hiring-also a key metric used to determine future job growth-while pessimists looked at sharp declines in construction jobs, continued upswing in long-term unemployment and steep revisions to 2009’s numbers that showed the jobless picture much worse than originally reported.

The Obama administration hung its hat on a slight increase in manufacturing hiring and gains in retail and temp hiring.

“Even as today’s numbers contain signs of the beginning of recovery, they also are a reminder of how far we still have to go to return the economy to robust health and full employment,” Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.

The White House also said the numbers reflect the importance of the government’s plans to grow jobs through infrastructure stimulus and aid for state and local governments.

But the markets seemed to remain unconvinced that a recovery is on the horizon.

“The government can’t stimulate anything,” Pento said. “It has to be economically viable, sustained and accretive to economic growth. The government has no idea what those jobs are. Only an individual knows what they want to produce and what they want to consume-not some far-off bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.”

There were, to be sure, some fairly clear indicators that the jobs market was improving in some critical areas.

Small businesses lost about 12,000 jobs last month but that was the smallest decline since July 2008, according to numbers released earlier in the week in the ADP National Employment Report. ADP’s numbers have consistently undercounted the government’s report by more than 90,000 in recent months but were almost dead-on for January-the report put the number of job losses at 22,000, just 2,000 more than the Labor Department’s total.

In fact, some analysts suspect that the government’s January numbers may not be correct and subject to further revision in a positive direction.

“A positive reading for January still holds but it will be less positive,” said Kurt Karl, chief economist at Swiss Re. “What we really need is job growth. I think we’re going to get it soon, and it may have happened in January.”

Karl expects financial services to rebound somewhat this year. The group was among the hardest hit when the housing industry collapsed.

But some of those jobs will not return, making a recovery even more difficult.

“Those jobs aren’t coming back, and to posit a vibrant private economy based on job destruction that we’ve experienced I think is extreme,” Bill Gross, co-CIO of bond manager Pimco, said in a CNBC interview earlier Friday.

Outside the service part of the housing industry, construction jobs were among the biggest losers in January, with 75,000 positions getting sucked out of the group.

Any real jobs recovery will be dependent on a housing recovery, said Mike Rubino, CEO at Rubino Financial Group in Troy, Mich.

“In an environment where people aren’t spending money and in an environment where there’s really no good reason to buy real estate except for the fact that you might be changing locations or looking for a job, we really don’t see any strength at all,” Rubino said. “The consumer has basically left the party.”

Posted in Industry, Jobs | Leave a Comment

Obama’s Math: More Exports Equals More Jobs

February 5, 2010 | Author: admin

Wall Street Journal

By DIANA RANSOM

Is President Obama’s plan to increase exports the booster small businesses need?

On Thursday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke revealed details about the president’s plan for doubling the nation’s exports in five years. The plan, known as the National Export Initiative or NEI, could support two million jobs, according to the president. Although many of the funds allotted to the program won’t be available until 2011, should the president’s budget pass, some efforts would go into effect immediately, said Locke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In the past, export promotion was “a ’some of the time’ focus” for cabinet agencies and departments, he said. Now, it will be an “all the time focus.”

[garylocke] Getty ImagesU.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke discusses the Obama administration’s plan to encourage job growth through increasing the amount of US exports.

Under the program, the government hopes to strengthen U.S. efforts to promote exports from small businesses, help enforce free-trade agreements with other nations, and work toward eliminating barriers to sales of U.S. products. Leaders from various government agencies including the Department of Commerce, the Treasury Department, the State Department, the Small Business Administration, and the U.S. Trade Representative will also be required to form a so-called Export Promotion Cabinet that will submit a detailed plan to the president about how they will collectively enhance U.S. exports.

In addition, the president has called upon the Export-Import Bank—an independent institution that provides financing to U.S. companies when private banks won’t—to increase its financing activities to small- and medium-sized businesses from $4 billion to $6 billion over the next year.

The funds that President Obama has proposed to support these initiatives are meager in comparison to the raft of new small-business aid programs that were included in the president’s $3.8 trillion budget. For example, he is budgeting an additional $54 million for the Department of Agriculture and an extra $78 million for the International Trade Administration. Yet some economists still say this initiative, depending on how it’s enacted, may be one of the president’s better ideas for creating jobs.

During the downturn, small business owners’ number one complaint has been their ability (or inability) to reach their sales goals, says Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business in Washington. Less than 1% of companies expected to increase sales in January, down from 1% a month earlier, according to the NFIB’s latest “Small Business Trends” survey. Helping U.S. companies export doesn’t just make sense financially for those firms, it could also boost jobs—especially in the manufacturing sector, he says.

Seconding that assessment is Thomas J. Prusa, an economics professor at Rutgers University. “For me, this is a policy that [could] create permanent (or long-term) improvement in the competitive position of U.S. businesses—and, in turn, [create] U.S. jobs,” he says. Further, if the dollar continues to weaken, which it has in recent months, “U.S. firms should be able to compete better in foreign markets,” Prusa says.

Still, this initiative won’t be easy. Less than 1% of the country’s 30 million companies export, according to Locke. Even fewer small companies do so, says Dunkelberg. Plus, there are very real barriers associated with international trade. Among them: currency exchange, cross-border tax differences and language barriers often inhibit a more vibrant export market.

Given these constraints, some small business owners are skeptical about the president’s plan to boost exports. “The only thing you can really expect from the government on the level that Obama is talking about is introducing parties,” says Scott Layman, a co-owner of Zyvax, a specialty chemicals supplier in Ellijay, Ga. “If anything, the countries where the government has injected itself the most—[North American Free Trade Agreement or] NAFTA countries—are the hardest places for us to export to,” says Layman, whose company now exports to roughly 100 countries.

For the NEI to run optimally, it would have to work in lock-step with programs like the president’s $30 billion small-business lending program, says Josh Lerner, an investment banking professor at Harvard Business. The reason? Lining up letters of credit and financing receivables is vital in exporting, he says. Under this program, which will be available to banks with assets under $10 billion, banks that increase lending to small businesses beyond 2009 levels may be required to pay reduced dividends owed to the Treasury Department. “The most important role the government could play in boosting exports is to help overcome financing constraints,” says Lerner. “Credit is the thing that makes trade grow; without this business lags or currency differences often confound foreign trade,” he says.

Brian Burt, the chief financial officer of Hardwoods of Michigan, a small flooring supply company in Clinton, Mich., says the risk involved with exporting is his biggest issue. Not only is there potential for getting stiffed and having no legal recourse, the time it takes to receive payment from foreign customers is lengthy. Typically, payments in the flooring industry clear in 30 days. For foreign customers, payments generally take 70 to 90 days, he says. “We manage our inventories well but couldn’t afford to have many more of our sales come in at 90 days,” says Burt. That said, if the president’s new plan does in fact help boost his company’s exports from roughly 5% or 10% to 20% or 30%, “we would definitely be adding people on,” he says.

Write to Diana Ransom at dransom@smartmoney.com

Posted in Economy, Jobs, Manufacturing | Leave a Comment

Jobless Rate Rises; U.S. Shed Jobs

February 5, 2010 | Author: admin

Wall Street Journal

LUCA DI LEO and JEFF BATER

[Economy] Associated PressApplicants talked to job recruiters at a fair in Santa Clara, Calif., on Jan. 23.

The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly declined in January, but the economy continued to shed jobs and revisions painted a bleaker picture for 2009, casting doubt over the labor market’s strength.

The unemployment rate, calculated using a household survey, fell to 9.7% last month from an unrevised 10% in December, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast the jobless rate would edge higher to 10.1%.

Meantime, nonfarm payrolls fell by 20,000 compared with a revised 150,000 drop decline in December. Economists had expected payrolls to be flat. The December figure was revised down sharply from an originally reported 85,000 drop.

The Labor Department’s annual benchmark revision to the survey that produces the monthly payroll report painted a bleaker 2009 picture. Last year, job losses were almost 600,000 more than previously reported, the revisions showed.

The January report was influenced by several special factors that may not be consistent with the underlying jobs trend. Temporary hiring for the U.S. 2010 census collection helped the employment picture in January, while the unusually cold weather probably hurt it. The interaction of a very bad employment year in 2009 with January seasonal factors clouds the picture further, analysts warned ahead of the release.

“We will be inclined to treat either a very strong or a very weak employment report — particularly the payroll portion — with a greater than usual skepticism,” Goldman Sachs economist Andrew Tilton warned in a note.

The so-called “underemployment” rate–which includes everyone in the official rate plus those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently–fell to 16.5% in January from 17.3%.

Since the start of the recession at the end of 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 8.4 million. Over the last quarter, however, employment has shown little net change as the economy’s recovery helped companies retain workers.

Although the revisions show there were more job losses in 2009 than previously reported, the moderation in payroll cuts in the second half of last year remained broadly in place. November was revised to show a 64,000 gain in payrolls from a previous reading that only 4,000 jobs were added.

Last month, employment fell in construction, transportation and warehousing, while retail trade and temporary help services added jobs. Temporary services added 52,000 jobs in January.

The Federal Reserve’s view that U.S. interest rates must remain at a record low for several months shouldn’t change following the jobs report. Fed officials have in the past warned against reading too much from just one set of monthly data.

The central bank’s rate-setting committee left interest rates close to zero last week in the face of low inflation and high unemployment. The labor market’s performance is likely to be the main driver of Fed decisions this year over if and when it is time to raise interest rates.

Fed officials have predicted the unemployment rate will remain above 9% in the fourth quarter of 2010 due to a slow recovery. The economy surged in the fourth quarter of last year, but that was driven by inventories, a factor that will fade this year.

Friday’s jobs report showed that average hourly earnings rose to $18.89 in Janaury from $18.84 the previous month. The average workweek was up by 0.1 hour to 33.3 hours.

This data was also revised by the Labor department, which started to report hours and earnings for all employees, instead of just for production and non-supervisory workers.

Posted in Economy, Jobs | Leave a Comment

January unemployment rate drops to 9.7 percent

February 5, 2010 | Author: admin

CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON – The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7 percent from 10 percent while employers shed 20,000 jobs, the government said Friday.

The rate dropped because a survey of households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the Labor Department said. The job losses are calculated from a separate survey of employers.

The report also included an annual revision to the estimates of total payrolls, which showed there were 930,000 fewer jobs last March than previously estimated. The department also revised down its estimates for April through October of last year, adding another 433,000 job losses.

The November figure was revised higher, however, to show a gain of 64,000 jobs.

All told, the Great Recession has eliminated 8.4 million jobs, the department said. That’s the most of any recession since World War II as a proportion of total payrolls.

Aside from November’s gain, January’s job losses were the smallest since the recession began. Employers cut 779,000 jobs in January 2009.

The report included more good news from the manufacturing sector, which is a key factor in the recovery. Manufacturers gained 11,000 jobs, its largest increase since April 2006.

Retailers added 42,100 jobs, the most since November 2007, before the recession began. Temporary help services gained 52,000 jobs, the fourth month of gains in that category. That could signal future hiring, as employers usually hire temp workers before permanent ones.

The number of part-time workers who want full-time work, but can’t find it fell by almost 1 million. That lowered the “underemployment” rate, which also includes discouraged workers, to 16.5 percent from 17.3 percent.

Posted in Economy, Jobs | Leave a Comment

Job losses from Great Recession about to get worse

February 5, 2010 | Author: admin

Job losses from Great Recession about to get worse as government revises employment data

Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Job losses during the Great Recession have been huge and they’re about to get bigger.

When the Labor Department releases the January unemployment report Friday, it will also update its estimate of jobs lost in the year that ended in March 2009. The number is expected to rise by roughly 800,000, raising the number of jobs shed during the recession to around 8 million.

The new data will help illustrate the scope of the jobs crisis. Analysts think the economy might generate 1 million to 2 million jobs this year. And they say it will take at least three to four years for the job market to return to anything like normal.

“It’s going to take a long time to dig out of this hole,” said Julia Coronado, senior U.S. economist at BNP Paribas.

Wall Street economists expect the January report will show a tiny increase of 5,000 jobs. That would be only the second monthly gain since the recession began. But it probably wouldn’t be enough to hold down the unemployment rate, which is forecast to rise to 10.1 percent. That would match October’s 26-year high. And it would be the fourth-straight month of double-digit joblessness.

The Labor Department’s revisions on employment levels are done every year. They are based on unemployment insurance tax data that companies submit to states.

Jobs remain scarce even as the economy is recovering: Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s output, has risen for two straight quarters. GDP rose by 5.7 percent in the October-December quarter, the fastest pace in six years.

But hiring is still lagging. Many economists say businesses are reluctant to add workers because it’s not clear whether the recovery will continue once government stimulus measures, such as tax credits for home buyers, end.

The debate over health care reform and the scheduled expiration of some Bush administration tax cuts at the end of this year may also cause companies to restrain hiring, many economists said.

“Until some of these uncertainties from Washington get cleared up, businesses, particularly small businesses, are going to be loath to do any additional hiring,” said Hank Smith, chief investment officer at Haverford Investments.

High unemployment is likely to hold back consumer spending, which has led most recoveries in the past. That’s why many economists think the current rebound will be weak.

Public concern about persistent unemployment has forced President Barack Obama and members of Congress to shift their attention to jobs and the economy and away from health care reform. The Senate will begin working Monday on legislation that would give companies a tax break for hiring new workers, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

The budget plan Obama released this week projects unemployment will still be very high — 9.8 percent — by the end of this year.

Instead of adding workers, many companies are squeezing their existing work forces to produce more. Productivity rose by a seasonally adjusted 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter, the Labor Department said Thursday, above analysts’ expectations of a 6 percent rise. That was the third straight quarter of sharp gains.

Productivity often increases at the end of recessions as companies ramp up output before hiring new workers. Rising productivity can raise living standards in the long run. But it can also make it easier for companies to put off adding jobs.

A separate Labor Department report on initial claims for jobless benefits said claims rose unexpectedly last week by 8,000 to 480,000. The rise in claims was the fourth in the past five weeks. It disappointed economists, who thought claims would resume a downward trend evident in the fall and early winter. The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, rose for the third straight week to 468,750.

Most economists say claims need to fall to about 425,000 or below for a month to signal that employers are stepping up hiring.

Still, some positive signs emerged in the productivity report. Hours worked in the fourth quarter rose 1 percent. That was the first increase since the second quarter of 2007. Output rose 7.2 percent, the largest increase since the third quarter of 2003.

To continue increasing production, economists say companies will eventually have to start adding jobs again. That should bring productivity gains back down toward their long-run average of about 2.5 percent.

“You can push your workers but so far,” said Anika Khan, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities. “At some point businesses have to begin to hire.”

But the main question is when. The economy could begin generating net job gains as early as March, Khan said. But they won’t be enough to hold down the unemployment rate. Wells Fargo expects the rate to peak at 10.5 percent in the second half of this year.

Posted in Jobs | Leave a Comment

China announces anti-dumping steps on US chicken

February 5, 2010 | Author: admin

On Friday February 5, 2010, 1:46 am EST

BEIJING (AP) — China announced anti-dumping duties of up to 105.4 percent Friday on imports of U.S. chicken products, adding to trade strains with Washington.

The case comes amid mutual accusations of protectionism by Beijing and Washington which both say will hurt efforts to end the global economic downturn.

A preliminary investigation concluded U.S. exports were being sold at improperly low prices that harmed Chinese competitors, the Commerce Ministry said. It said importers must post a bond until a final decision is reached.

Beijing launched the investigation in September after Washington raised duties on imports of Chinese-made tires despite vigorous opposition from China.

The two governments also are embroiled in disputes over access to each other’s markets for steel pipes, movies and books and other goods.

U.S. President Barack Obama said this week Washington would take a tougher stand against Beijing in disputes over trade and currency. China’s foreign ministry criticized the comments and said its currency controls are not to blame for the country’s trade surplus.

The chicken duties take effect Feb. 13 and apply to whole birds, chicken sausage and other products, the Commerce Ministry said. Included are chicken feet, which most Americans throw away but which are a declicacy in southern China.

Companies that appealed the ruling will pay lower duties of 43.1 percent to 80.5 percent, the ministry said. Tyson Foods Inc. will be charged the lowest rate, while Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. is at the top end of that range.

Importers that did not appeal will be charged 105.4 percent, the ministry said.

China Ministry of Commerce (in Chinese): http://www.mofcom.gov.cn

Posted in China, Food, Government, Jobs, Supply Chain | Leave a Comment

Don’t let immigrants take US jobs

February 4, 2010 | Author: admin
By David R. Francis David R. Francis Tue Feb 2, 12:00 pm ET

About 15 million Americans are unemployed. Yet Washington allows businesses to bring in about 1 million foreigners a year to take supposedly short-term jobs that many jobless would leap at taking if they could.

It’s a “ridiculous” situation, says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington think tank that generally urges a lower level of immigration into the United States.

This year, the H-2B program alone will let more than 100,000 lower-skilled foreign workers come to the US as “temporary, seasonal, nonagricultural guest workers.” Businesses like the program because the foreigners, who need the jobs in order to stay in the US, “shut up and do what they are told,” says Mr. Krikorian.

But H-2B operates under a flawed assumption, says David Seminara, a former US Foreign Service officer and author of a CIS study on the program. The flawed assumption is that “Americans don’t want to mow your lawn. They don’t want to serve you your lobster roll sandwich during your summer holiday in Maine. They won’t drive the trucks that bring food to the grocery store.” In fact, many Americans would welcome such jobs.

President Obama, as a candidate, promised to push for “comprehensive” reform of immigration law, probably including amnesty for some of the perhaps 11 million illegal immigrants plus a boost in legal immigration.

With the GOP’s victory in the US Senate race in Massachusetts Jan. 19, the chances of Congress tackling such a politically risky broad bill before the fall elections are about zero, Krikorian figures. One bill that might have a chance of passage is the DREAM legislation (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), which gives amnesty to illegal immigrants’ illegal children if they have graduated from high school in the US.

US immigration policy is extremely controversial because of the clash of business, labor, and humanitarian interests.

Haiti is the latest example. In the wake of the horrific earthquake there in January, the Obama administration has given “temporary protected status” (TPS) to some 30,000 Haitians already in the US and facing deportation. They won’t be sent back to Haiti for at least 18 months. TPS may apply to another 70,000 or more illegal Haitians, figures Krikorian.

He backs this humanitarian move but notes that as far as his organization can find, no previous refugee group granted TPS has ever been deported. Temporary amnesty is in fact permanent.

So far, the administration has made it clear that Haitians fleeing their desperate situation will not be admitted to the US as refugees. But if that clarity is replaced by mixed signals, expect a flood, warns Krikorian. “Things will spin out of control.”

The Haitian disaster is raising concerns about a repeat of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when 125,000 Cubans left Cuba by boat and rickety raft to come to Florida and other parts of the US. That humanitarian operation had a political backlash.

At the time, President Carter was criticized because some of the refugees had been released from prisons and mental institutions. When some Cubans were taken to Arkansas, it led to riots and played a role in Bill Clinton’s reelection defeat in the Arkansas governor’s race, some analysts say.

Americans want to help Haiti with its fast-growing population of 9 million. But the humanitarian crisis is not likely to prompt Washington to come up with a comprehensive and consistent immigration policy.

•David R. Francis writes a weekly column.

Posted in Economy, Jobs, Outsourcing | Leave a Comment

Productivity, Jobless Claims Rise

February 4, 2010 | Author: admin

By LUCA DILEO and SARAH N. LYNCH

U.S. productivity, or output per hours worked, continued to rise strongly in the fourth quarter of 2009 as the economy’s expansion didn’t stop many employers from cutting labor costs.

Separately, the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week in another sign that the labor market has yet to recover even as the economy is expanding. Total claims lasting more than one week, meanwhile, also edged higher.

Nonfarm business labor productivity rose by a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 6.2% in the October-to-December period, after increasing by a downwardly revised 7.2% in the third quarter of last year, data from the Labor Department showed Thursday.

The figures were slightly below expectations. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted a 7.0% increase in fourth-quarter productivity. The third-quarter figure was revised lower from a previous reading of 8.1%.

Companies continued to cut costs at the end of 2009 even as the economic recovery gained steam, meaning they are getting more from existing work forces. Nonfarm output rose at a 7.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter while hours worked increased by 1.0%, the first rise in hours worked in more than two years, the report showed.

Overall, productivity has risen by 5.1% over the last four quarters, more than during any similar period since the first quarter of 2001 to the first quarter of 2002. That was when the economy was recovering from the internet bubble burst.

The Labor Department also reported that unit labor costs — a measure of what it costs firms to pay workers for a single unit of output they produce — fell at a 4.4% annual rate in the last three months of 2009, following a 1.5% decline in the third quarter. Economists had forecast a 3.5% drop in the final quarter of last year. The third-quarter figure was revised from a previous reading of -2.5%.

Big productivity gains are common at the end of recessions and the beginning of recoveries. The usual pattern is productivity grows first, then employment rises, and finally wages increase.

U.S. economic growth surged at the end of 2009, with gross domestic product rising an annualized 5.7% rate in the fourth quarter, the government’s first estimate of fourth-quarter growth showed last week. However, most of the gain was driven by inventories and the economy’s expansion is yet to translate in employers hiring workers.

The jobs report due for release on Friday is expected to show that employers stopped shedding jobs in January, but the unemployment rate is still forecast to have inched higher to 10.1% last month.

The productivity gains should help prevent an outbreak of inflation, making the Federal Reserve more comfortable with keeping short-term interest near zero to support the economy so that unemployment can come down.

To counter the financial crisis, the Fed has slashed interest rates to a record low and pumped $1 trillion into the financial system through loans and securities purchases. In normal times, so much monetary stimulus would have pushed consumer prices much higher.

Last week, the Fed’s policy making arm was more upbeat on the U.S. economy’s outlook, but repeated a vow to keep rates near zero for several more months to support the recovery.

The productivity of workers is a linchpin to an economy’s health and growth potential. The U.S. economy went through a productivity drought in the 1970s and “80s and a resurgence in the late “90s. It slowed sharply between 2004 and 2008.

In a separate report Thursday, the Labor Department said new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week, in another sign that the labor market has some way to recover.

Initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 8,000 to 480,000 in the week ended Jan. 30, according to the Labor Department’s weekly report Thursday. The previous week’s level was revised upward to 472,000 from 470,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected initial claims to decrease by 10,000.

The four-week moving average, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, also increased for the week ending Jan. 30. The Labor Department said the four-week moving average went up by 11,750 to 468,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 457,000.

Thursday’s report is considered by some economists to be the first “clean” data set in more than a month. Two weeks ago, claims unexpectedly spiked due to a holiday backlog in the processing of claims. Wrightson ICAP in a note Wednesday anticipated that these latest numbers should have no “obvious distortions in them.” A Labor Department economist Thursday seemed to support that view. He also said that no states cited increment winter weather as a factor affecting last week’s claims.

Thursday’s spike in claims come just one day before the Labor Department is slated to release its January jobs report. Economists expect nonfarm payroll numbers to remain flat, although they are also forecasting a slight increase in the unemployment rate from 10 to 10.1%. The December report showed a decrease of 85,000 jobs.

Labor market conditions have led policymakers in Washington to push job creation to the top of their political agenda for 2010.

President Barack Obama outlined proposals in his fiscal year 2011 budget plan earlier this week that he hopes will help improve labor market conditions. He proposed giving small businesses that hire new workers or raise wages a tax credit, for instance, and he also called for a doubling of U.S. exports over the next five years.

The U.S. Senate, meanwhile, is also working on a jobs package that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.) has said will entail small business tax credits on expensing, a tax credit for hiring workers, bonds for state infrastructure projects, and a one-year extension of highway funding.

In the Labor Department’s Thursday report, the number of continuing claims–those drawn by workers for more than one week in the week ended Jan. 23 -rose by 2,000 to 4,602,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,600,000.

The unemployment rate for workers with unemployment insurance for the week ended Jan. 23 was 3.5% — unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.5%.

The largest increase in initial claims for the week ended Jan. 23 was in Oregon. The largest decrease in initial claims occurred in California.

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