USA Today

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on "mass layoffs" yesterday. It also included annual totals and an eleven-year chart of mass layoff history. A "mass layoff action" involves "at least 50 persons from a single establishment." Since 1988, employers have been required to give 60 days notice of "covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs." The BLS Mass Layoffs…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released what it calls its Usual Weekly Earnings Report for the Fourth Quarter of 2006 on Friday.This is one of the more important reports the BLS releases because:It looks at the earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, excluding part-timers, business owners, and the self-employed. It looks at individuals, not households or families. Unlike most reports, it…

Gas prices and oil prices have been slipping lately, just not at the same rate. And that's a "real scandal" to some liberal, self-styled consumer advocates like Judy Dugan of The Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights. That's all well and good, of course, except when the media parrot the complaint and don't explain the group's biases. That's exactly what we found from USA Today's front…

Outsourcing and the Internet are helping "microbusiness" owners to thrive, USA Today reported in a recent edition. That’s funny. As Lou Dobbs would have us believe, outsourcing does nothing but turn middle class Americans into economic cannon fodder for major corporations."Competitiveness, productivity, and efficiency are nothing more than code words for 'cheaper labor,'" Dobbs…

Another exasperating storyline from the MSM: the economy may be just fine overall but its screwing over 20-somethings who have to live with mom and dad.My colleague Dan Gainor wrote up a review of the media's reheating the tired old storyline: In the November 26 “World News Sunday” story “Young & in Debt,” anchor Dan Harris talked up the story about twentysomethings “forced…

In a fitting Veterans Day tribute, this morning’s USA Today recognizes America’s “21st Century Heroes,” a relatively small group of U.S. military servicemen who received our country's highest honors for their valor in Iraq and Afghanistan. Good for USA Today. There hasn’t been much coverage of America's military heroes — indeed, back in June the Media Research Center noted that a three-week time…

Imagine if you will that a month ago, a major newspaper, in combination with a major polling organization, had pronounced that the Republicans were ahead by 23 percentage points in voter preference for the upcoming midterm elections. Further imagine that just two weeks ago, this lead had been trimmed to thirteen. And, just for argument’s sake, with two days to go before the pivotal elections, the…

“The John Kerry flap may have been the major political story yesterday, and even today,” Brit Hume accurately noted in his Wednesday “Grapevine” segment since, indeed, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts led with it both Tuesday and Wednesday night. But he observed, “you might not have known that from the newspaper coverage. Not a single front-page headline in the New York Times, Washington…