Jobs | featured news

The number of U.S. job openings fell slightly in August, a troubling sign for a labor market that is recovering at a painfully slow pace. Job openings - a measure of labor demand - dropped to 3.56 million from 3.59 million in July, the Labor Department said on Wednesday in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The data casts a small shadow over recent signs of improvement in the labor market.

Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie brushed past the latest conspiracy theory Sunday, focusing instead on the fact that the unemployment rate remains at a high 7.8%.

However, Romney's strong showing in Denver did little to convince more voters he understands them or is a "good person," according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Saturday... On the broad question of who they will vote for in November, Obama kept his 2 percentage point lead among likely voters - 47 percent to 45 percent - in the online survey.

The presidential race enters its final month enlivened by two events with the potential to reshape the contest or perhaps negate each other. Soon after Mitt Romney's strong debate performance came Friday's encouraging economic news, not a minute too soon for President Barack Obama.

We’ve hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. Case in point, within minutes of the jobs report, Twitter filled with Republicans claiming the books were somehow cooked, the numbers aren’t real, etc. Let’s take a deep breath. Jobs reports are about the economy, not about the election. Confusing the two leads to very bad analysis.

Following an unexpectedly strong jobs report Friday showing unemployment falling to 7.8 percent and 114,000 new jobs added, conservative media figures and one prominent business leader quickly latched on to conspiracy theories about the veracity of the numbers. Call it jobs-numbers trutherism. And for the sake of historical record, its origin was a tweet from former General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits rose slightly in the latest week, indicating a labor market that remains in the doldrums. The Labor Department reported that new claims rose a seasonally-adjusted 4,000 to 367,000, while the four-week moving average, considered a more accurate gauge of labor market conditions, was flat at 375,000.

The euro zone's economic woes accelerated last month and China's slowdown looked likely to extend to a seventh quarter, surveys on Wednesday showed, while the United States proved the bright spot with better-than-expected news on services and jobs.

Companies added 162,000 jobs in September, more than economists expected but still pointing to slow improvement in the labor market, data from a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.

The government went back over its numbers and found something missing -- nearly 400,000 new jobs. In its annual revision to its employment data, the Labor Department said Thursday that 386,000 more jobs were created in the year ending in March than it originally had reported. The revision is a preliminary estimate, with a final figure coming in February.