Month: September 2017

The U.S. unemployment rate rose slightly in August and the net gain in jobs was lower than economists predicted.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department says the jobless rate rose one — tenth of one percent to 4.4 percent. While that is an increase, it is still close to a 16 — year low.

Across the economy, there was a net gain of 156,000 jobs — tens of thousands fewer than the prior month.

Wages continued to grow at a 2.5 percent annual rate. PNC Bank chief economist Gus Faucher says “soft” wage growth is a persistent problem, but predicts a tight labor market may soon prompt employers to offer higher pay.

Economic analyst Mark Hamrick of Bankrate.com says the lack of wage growth when unemployment is low is causing “a lot of head — scratching” ((is very puzzling)) for economists. He says part of the problem is that weak growth in productivity is hurting wage growth.Hamrick adds that a flood of retirements of the baby boomer generation means younger workers, who tend to have lower wages, are taking over.

Government economists who monitor unemployment say Hurricane Harvey had “no discernable effect” on these jobless figures because the data was collected before the storm struck. Faucher says the next jobless report may show substantially weaker growth because of Harvey, but that the impact will be temporary as people are hired for reconstruction efforts.

The report says 7.1 million Americans are out of work, and another 5.3 million who want full — time jobs stuck with part — time work. There were job gains in manufacturing, construction, professional services, and health care.

A separate survey by the University of Michigan shows more than half of consumers say their personal financial situation has improved over the past few months. That is the best showing in about 17 years. Economists watch consumer attitudes closely because consumers who feel financially secure are more likely to make major purchases like cars or homes. Consumer demand drives most U.S. economic activity.
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Aid groups have criticized efforts by European leaders to stem the flow of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, arguing Europe’s economy needs more workers. One nongovernmental organization in Italy has been trying to fill the gap by training African migrants to work as beekeepers and then pairing them with local honey producers in need of employees. Ricci Shryock reports for VOA from Alessandria, Italy.
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As women pound the pavements of Abidjan selling their wares, direct manic traffic in blue police uniforms and host popular television shows, it’s hard to believe Ivory Coast has one of the world’s widest gender gaps.

With stark inequalities in school, as well as in access to healthcare and jobs, the United Nations ranks French-speaking West Africa’s largest economy 155 out of 159 countries when it comes to gender equity.

“Ivorian women get by because we have strength,” said Animata Touré, before trying to cajole passersby into buying her fruit in the city’s business district Plateau.

“[Life] is a bit hard,” she acknowledged.

The 46-year-old has scraped by as a hawker all her life, shelving her dream of opening a small restaurant as unrealistic.

“Who is going to give me the means to do that?”

Ivorian women earn on average half as much as men, the World Bank says, largely because they are less educated, spend several hours a day cooking and caring for children, and lack access to finance, equipment and commercial networks.

Supporting would-be female entrepreneurs, like Touré, could generate at least $6 billion, or a third of the country’s current revenues, the Bank says.

“We have huge potential here,” said Ahmed Diomande, an official in the trade ministry, describing the World Bank’s latest data as an “alarm bell.”

“The challenge is convincing men that they have a vested interest in gender parity,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a women’s rights conference in Abidjan.

The government is working to reduce the gender gap by using a $9 million loan from Morocco to fund small- and medium-sized businesses run by women entrepreneurs, he said.

It is also backing a private-sector initiative to lift women out of the informal sector by training them as grocery store managers in more than a dozen shops in Abidjan.

As Ivory Coast’s vast, informal economy is largely run by women, authorities and business leaders are keen to help them make the leap to better-paying, regulated businesses with training and access to credit.

“Economic power is in women’s hands,” said Salimata Porquet, a former politician who fought successfully for gender equality at work to be included in Ivory Coast’s 2016 constitution.

Books for Boys

Ivory Coast needs to get more girls into school and provide them with role models across the board, from business to politics, activists say, as reducing gender inequality has proven key to the success of many emerging nations.

Discrimination starts young in Ivory Coast, where only 33 percent of women are literate compared to 53 percent of men – a gap that has widened since the early 1980s, the bank says.

Unlike most African nations, Ivory Coast does not have an equal number of boys and girls in primary school.

Many poor parents educate their boys, rather than girls, as they believe the sons will get better jobs and provide for them.

Girls, meanwhile, often become married mothers in their teens.

“The more we see women… in a field that we like, the more we have young girls trying to follow that path,” said Tchonté Silué, 23, a female blogger who runs a children’s library in Abidjan to encourage youngsters to read.

She tries to inspire Ivorian girls by sharing her story as a young woman who earned a master’s degree in the United States.

Activists say women also need to support each other as they advance in business and politics.

“If we’re able to share our experiences, that can inspire each woman to do her part,” said Marie-Thérèse Boua N’Guessan, who runs a publication about women’s leadership.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman’s future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy.

In a CNBC interview, Mnuchin on Thursday avoided a direct answer when asked whether he supported the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Tubman, the 19th century African-American abolitionist who was a leader in the Underground Railroad.

“People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he said. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we have a lot more important issues to focus on.”

During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump praised Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, for his “history of tremendous success” and said the decision to replace him with Tubman was “pure political correctness.”

Trump suggested during the campaign that one possibility would be to put Tubman on another bill and leave Jackson on the $20. He and Ben Carson, currently secretary of housing and urban development, had both suggested during the GOP primaries that Tubman might go on the $2 bill instead.

Then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced last year that he had decided to place Tubman on the $20 bill as part of a make-over of the nation’s currency to improve security features on the bills. The new currency bearing Tubman’s portrait was scheduled to be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.

Lew arrived at the decision to displace Jackson on the $20 bill after generating a loud outcry with an initial proposal to put a woman on the $10 bill replacing Alexander Hamilton.

In the CNBC interview, Mnuchin said, “The number one issue why we change the currency is to stop counterfeiting. So the issues of why we change it will be primarily related to what we need to do for security purposes.”

At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, “I’m not aware of any policy change. I’d certainly have to check into that.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Mnuchin also:

— Said the original goal of getting Congress to pass comprehensive tax reform by August “got delayed a bit,” but he stressed that the administration was still on track to have a measure signed into law by the end of this year.

Mnuchin’s comments on taxes came one day after Trump launched the administration’s fall push to overhaul the nation’s tax system with a speech in Springfield, Missouri. There he said the plan, details of which have yet to be revealed, would unlock strong economic growth, reduce the tax burden of the middle-class and encourage corporations to keep jobs in America.

Mnuchin rejected the idea that the administration has yet to settle on the details of the tax plan.

“We are on track to get this done by the end of the year,” he said. “So you’re going to see the detail come out [in September.] It’s going to go through a committee process. We expect the House and Senate will get this to the president to sign this year and we couldn’t be more excited about the progress we’ve made.”

Mnuchin would not say whether Trump’s goal of reducing the top corporate tax rate to 15 percent from the current 35 percent would remain in the finished administration proposal, or whether it might be changed to a less ambitious cut to 20 or 25 percent.

“We’ll go through with the [congressional] committees and see where we end up,” Mnuchin said.

— Expressed confidence that Congress will pass legislation needed to raise the government’s borrowing limit this fall and avoid a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt. Mnuchin has authority to use a range of bookkeeping maneuvers to avoid breaching the limit through Sept. 29, although private analysts believe the actual deadline for Congress increasing the current $19 trillion limit will be in mid-October.

— Stated that the administration has a good working relationship with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. He refused to say how many candidates, other than Yellen, President Donald Trump is considering for the Fed job when Yellen’s current term expires in February. Trump said in an interview last month that Yellen, Gary Cohn, head of Trump’s National Economic Council, and “two or three” other contenders were in the mix.

Yellen used a high-profile speech last Friday at a central bank conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to defend the Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul passed in 2010. She described it as a successful effort to make the financial system stronger following the 2008 financial crisis. Trump has called the measure a “disaster” and he and GOP lawmakers would like to rewrite it extensively to reduce regulatory burden on banks.

Asked if this was an area of conflict between Yellen and the administration, Mnuchin said, “I had breakfast with Fed Chair Yellen this morning. … we have a very constructive dialogue on a lot of issues including regulation.”

Mnuchin said “ultimately the president will make a decision later in the year” on who he will nominate for a new term as Fed chair.
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Gasoline futures surged more than 13 percent Thursday, and crude oil settled nearly 3 percent higher, as almost a quarter of U.S. refining capacity remained offline and traders scrambled to reroute millions of barrels of fuel.

U.S. gasoline futures have rallied more than 28 percent from the previous week to a two-year high above $2 a gallon, buoyed by fears of a fuel shortage days ahead of the U.S. Labor Day weekend’s traditional surge in driving. Gasoline settled up 25.52 cents, or 13.54 percent, at $2.1399.

Hurricane Harvey, which brought record flooding to the U.S. oil heartland of Texas and killed at least 35 people, has paralyzed at least 4.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of refining capacity, according to company reports and Reuters estimates.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said that roughly 13.5 percent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico was also shut in Thursday.

US taps strategic oil reserves

The U.S. government tapped its strategic oil reserves for the first time in five years Thursday, releasing 1 million barrels of crude to a working refinery in Louisiana. Traders were also scrambling to redirect fuel to the United States.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled $1.27 higher at $47.23 per barrel, up 2.76 percent. It remained on track to close August down almost 6 percent, the steepest monthly loss since March.

International benchmark Brent crude settled $1.52 higher, or 2.99 percent, at $52.38 a barrel. It had fallen by just more than 2 percent in the previous session.

“The market has turned in reverse pretty sharply,” said Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy. “You do have some signs of rebalancing, regardless of Harvey.”

US refineries key to oil prices

On Wednesday, oil prices fell despite a weekly drop in closely watched U.S. commercial crude stocks of 5.39 million barrels. Crude inventories are 14.5 percent below record levels hit in March.

OPEC output this month also fell 170,000 bpd from a 2017 high, a Reuters survey found, as renewed unrest cut supplies in Libya and other members stepped up compliance with a production-cutting deal.

Analysts called the status of U.S. refineries a key to oil prices.

“The disruptions in recent days may delay the ongoing global crude oil rebalancing process,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Stifel said U.S. outages would probably last several months, but it was difficult to estimate the exact damage. Others said higher gasoline prices might prompt operational refineries to delay typical September seasonal maintenance.

“Refineries outside the affected area may delay maintenance to benefit from high processing margins,” said Commerzbank oil analyst Carsten Fritsch. “Hence, the negative impact on crude oil demand and oil product supply might be less severe than feared.”

Shrinking crude stocks and expectations for rising growth in global demand meant analysts in a monthly Reuters poll raised their oil price forecasts for the first time in six months.
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