11/30/07 Apple's Hire Power: Job Growth Best in the Country, NY Post. BLS data for October released 11/17 and 11/28 show NYC added 57,000 (compared with October 2006) or 1.5 percent, ahead of the national average job growth of 1.2 percent. (But "best in the country" is justified only because NYC is big so a 1.5 percent addition is big, and the chart attached to the story is incorrectly labeled.) A major source of new jobs is business and professional services, which added 14,700 jobs. Within that sector, advertising jobs grew 7.7 percent - with Internet advertising more than making up for the losses in print advertising. Another interesting area is construction, which grew 5.4 percent, the largest increase since February 2001, during a period when national construction jobs fell 1.1 percent. The financial sector grew by13,000 jobs - but this number may falter in November.
11/29/07 One Out of Eight US Residents Is an Immigrant, NY Times. Over the past seven years, 10.2 million immigrats entered the United States, more than any previous seven-year period in American history, bringing the total number of immigrants to 37.9 million, one out of eight residents. More than half of immigrants came without documentation, according to the Washington, DC-based Center for Immigration Studies, which relied on Census data. One-third lack health insurance.
11/29/07 Feds to Suspend Rule against Employing Illegals, NY Times. The administration will suspend a rule issued in August holding employers liable for hiring illegal immigrants, pending revision of the rule because of objections by a federal judge.
11/29/07 Baby Boomers Will Rewrite the Rules of Retirement, McKinsey Quarterly. The boomers have changed the rules all the way through, so why should retirement be different?
11/29/07 Foreclosures Soar in Two Boroughs, NY Post. Compared with October 2006, foreclosures in October 2007 rose 170 percent in Queens and 50 percent in Brooklyn.
11/27/07 Immigrants Account for 37 Percent of NYC Payroll, 22 Percent of NYS Economy, Metro NY. A report from the Fiscal Policy Institute hammers away at data showing that immigrants contribute at least as much to the economy as other residents. An immigrant is defined in the report as someone born in another country. This underreported analysis gives a good picture of the occupational and geographic distribution of immigrants in NY State.
11/20/07 Traffic Mitigation Testimony Constructive, Environmental Defense. A majority of witnesses before the Traffic Mitigation Commission offered constructive suggestions for improving the traffic congestion/mitigation plan.
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11/25 (HuffPost): An email I received from a friend attributed to Rep. Ron Paul a $3.5 trillion estimate for the cost of the war in Iraq. His source was the Joint Economic Committee Democratic majority, headed by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). Here, for my friend and you, is a guide to the sometimes confusing evolution of these cost estimates. More: 11/25/07 Huffington Post, Why Estimates of the Cost of the War in Iraq have Been Rising. 11/24/2007 John Tepper Marlin, Blogspot, A Guide to Estimates of the Cost of the Iraq War.
11/01/07 (Acknowledged in book): David Toomey, New Time Travelers (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), about scholars who have written in-depth about time travel. John Tepper Marlin provided information about his uncle Dr. Willem Jacob van Stockum, a mathematician who was the first to show (in 1937) how Einstein's theory of relativity implied possibilities for time travel. |