Economy, Jobs | featured news

Third straight month of weak hiring shows economy is struggling three years after recession ended. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor Department said Friday. Click to Continue »

The last piece of this month's economic data puzzle is expected to confirm what others have shown so far: the U.S. job machine isn't putting Americans back to work fast enough.

While the Supreme Court’s upholding of the health-care law was last week’s most important event in historical terms, it will not be the decisive event of the 2012 election. In the long run, polling in swing states suggesting that Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is hurting him could have larger implications for where this campaign will move.

The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits fell last week, but the level of applications remains too high to signal a pickup in hiring.

The Washington Post is standing by its reporting on Bain Capital’s outsourcing under Mitt Romney, and will not retract a recent story despite complaints from the Romney campaign.

The attack is the latest iteration of President Obama’s attempts to demonize Mitt Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital.

Donna Brazile: Mitt Romney would rather see the American economy fail than President Obama win... As Bloomberg News reported, Romney urged Florida Gov. Rick Scott to downplay good economic news in the Sunshine State. It's his way of sending a signal to Republican governors in states where the economy is improving -- in the battlegrounds of Virginia, Ohio and elsewhere -- to be quiet. Obscure the truth, he begs. Obstruct any progress.

When it comes to the economy, half of Americans in a new poll say it won't matter much whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins - even though the presidential candidates have staked their chances on which would be better at fixing the economic mess....

President Obama ripped Mitt Romney today over a report that the Republican's private equity firm invested in companies that moved jobs out of the United States to low-wage countries. "We do not need an outsourcing pioneer in the Oval Office," Obama said during a fundraising speech in Tampa, Fla. "We need a president who will fight for American jobs."

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, the impact on the nation’s employment picture goes beyond veterans returning home who are looking for work.