News & Commentary

August 17, 2014

The New York Times Editorial Board  this weekend urged the Obama administration to fix immigration policies that have left over 11 million unauthorized immigrants without resources or next steps.  They urged the administration “to bring immigration policy in line with lawfulness and common sense” by allowing the “Department of Homeland Security to get control of its enforcement machinery to make sure that its actions in the field match the priorities set in Washington, focusing resources on public-safety and national-security threats, not the workers and families trapped in the failed system.”  The Editorial Board cites two examples of misguided Homeland Security issues: racial profiling of Latinos in immigration and customs policies brought to light by the New Orleans Center for Racial Justice, and North Carolina sheriff Terry Johnson of Alamance County who on trial this month, accused by the Justice Department of rampant racial-profiling abuses against Latinos.

The Chicago Sun-Times profiled the ongoing tension between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union.  The article reports that the CTU is “out for [Emanuel’s] head after he closed 50 schools, mostly in poor and minority communities.”  However, in the mayor’s reelection efforts, union groups have donated more than $1 million to Emanuel since last year.  In the article, Brandon Johnson, the deputy political director for the Chicago Teachers Union, said if CTU President Karen Lewis does launch a mayoral bid, she will have no problem grabbing union backing. “We’re confident there will be plenty of labor support for her,” Johnson said. “She’s prepared to defend retirement security and bring real revenue to the city.”

The New York Times reports that “more jobs are open, but they’re filling slowly.”  Though job report numbers indicate that employers are firing fewer workers than they did when times were good, they are also hiring fewer people to fill open positions.  These figures have come into the forefront of labor economists’ dialogue ever since Janet Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, began to cite monthly Jolts (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) reports in her in her assessment of the economy.

In international news, Canada was forced to release a second version of the country’s July jobs report after detecting a processing error in original data released on August 8.  The new numbers show that 41,700 jobs were added in July, “well above the original estimate issued a week ago of a meager 200 jobs, and more than double market expectations for a 20,000 advance, according to economists at Royal Bank of Canada.”

Following Thursday’s popular interactive graphics showing how Americans have moved state-to-state since 1900, the New York Times mapped current migration throughout the United States.  Each shape within a state represents where the people living in a state were born, with larger shapes mean a group makes up a larger share of the population.

Enjoy OnLabor’s fresh takes on the day’s labor news, right in your inbox.