Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ Links (031306)

Free Links:

• 243,000 Net New Jobs were generated last month, and unemployement went up a tenth of a point to 4.8%. Betcha didn’t know that “Hourly wages, whose gains lagged inflation in 2004 and 2005, rose 0.3% from January and 3.5% vs. a year ago. That’s the best annual growth since September 2001″ (4th paragraph at link).
• Another Foreign Automaker to Manufacture in the US — Kia will build in West Point, Georgia. Further sweat will be noticed coming out of Metro Detroit.
• “Homesourcing” is the New Name for “Telecommuting,” and it’s on the rise — “as companies look to cut costs — and more employees seek jobs that allow them to work remotely. The number of home-based agents will nearly triple over the next few years, says research group IDC, as major employers and independent call-center providers step up their hiring of contractors to do telephone work from home — dubbed homesourcing.” The article’s glaring weakness is that it doesn’t give an estimate of how many homesourcers there currently are.
• France Tries to Do Something Designed to Reduce Chronic Twenty-Something Unemployment, and it appears that its effort will be stymied — The government essentially wants the employer-employee relationship to be “at will” during someone’s first two years with a company, i.e., companies can terminate someone without cause. Given that this is how most employment situations are here in the United States, and given that the US unemployment rate is about half that of France, you would think that this would be seen as a desirable change. You would be wrong; young people who prefer unemployment to employment at will are marching in the streets.
• Larry Kudlow points to a Linda Chavez column that identifies a bigger security concern about port operations than the one that has been discussed ad nauseam for the past few weeks — mob control:
  

  Despite the International Longshoremen’s Association’s sordid history (of mob ties), few lawmakers who profess concern about port security seem in the slightest bit worried that the ILA’s role on the docks may constitute a huge security risk. The ILA contributes millions of dollars each election cycle. In the 2004 election cycle, the ILA’s political action committee (PAC) had over $7 million cash on hand to distribute to candidates.

  Among the top recipients of ILA PAC money in the last few elections were Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, all of whom represent states with important ports. Some of these same senators are among the chief critics of the Dubai port deal, but they are noticeably silent when it comes to mob influence in the union that actually controls who works on these ports.

  How offensive it is that both senators from the state where the towers fell don’t seem to care about THAT security risk.