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In "Finishing the March: African-Americans and the Jobs Deficit," I attempted to explain how the disappearance of good jobs, with benefits, and livable wages hit African-Americans particularly hard. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. This animated GIF from the Center for Economic Policy Research, explaining where good jobs have gone for Black workers, popped up in my reading queue over the 4th of July holiday. It does a good job of illustrating what's happened to African-American workers over the last few decades.

The Senate immigration reform bill's $46 billion "border surge" was supposed to bring more conservatives on board. While it helped get enough conservatives for a solid 68-vote majority in the Senate, many other conservatives are attacking it as wasteful government...

I posted back in April about how some businesses in Colorado were doing the equivalent of voluntarily paying additional taxes when the sequester spending cuts forced Yellowstone National Park not to do its customary spring snow removal on park roads. Waiting for the snow to melt rather than plowing it off the roads threatened to reduce the number of visitors to the areas surrounding the park and, therefore, the amount of business the very tourist-heavy stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. would do. Lydia DePillis reported much the same thing in The Washington Post this past weekend when she wrote about how businesses and some individuals were paying for the 4th of July celebrations -- especially parades -- that previously had been provided by local governments

The 'market' isn't working for working people. The rich have rigged the rules. We ought to keep trying, of course, to reduce the resulting inequality. But why not, unions are asking, end the rule-rigging? Sometimes we need new words to get a grasp on new ideas....

For four long years after the recession officially ended, conservative austerity policies have sabotaged America's economic recovery, condemning millions of Americans to unemployment and poverty.  And in Europe, the same policy regime of spending cuts aimed at deficit...

Yesterday, the Obama Administration announced that one of the major provisions in the Affordable Care Act will be delayed for one year. Under the law, starting in 2014, businesses with over 50 employees would have been required to provide healthcare to workers or pay a fine. That provision will now not take effect until 2015, after next year's midterm elections. Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Mazur said, “We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively.”

Yesterday was the Fourth of July. That's the day we celebrate the vision and courage shown by our nation's founders. July 4th is the day they published a document which said it was "self-evident" that everyone has "certain unalienable rights," including the rights to...

You have to give them credit for consistency: Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

This month’s lackluster jobs report – 195,000 net jobs created in the month of June with the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.6 percent – leaves Americans adrift. More than 22 million Americans remain in need of full-time work. The participation rate in the labor...