New Jobs Numbers Better Than Expected

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Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job growth was widespread in the private sector, with large employment gains in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. Government employment changed little over the month.

How To Create a Job

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This is the title of this week's This American Life episode, where they turned over the program to NPR's simply amazing Planet Money Team. What is fantastic about this bit of financial reporting, is that Planet Money listens to the platitudes and Conventional Wisdom about job creation and goes off to see if any of it is true.

The Cost of Tax Breaks for Jobs

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Via the Star-Ledger, we find that a NJ think tank -- New Jersey Policy Perspective -- has taken a hard look at the massive subsidies being funneled to private businesses in NJ and found that there aren't many jobs associated with all of that money.  In the past two years, NJ has given out $822M in tax subsidies: