United States Department of Labor

From Washington, this is NPR News.

The Labor Department is reporting that last week, jobless claims fell to their lowest level since mid-July to 196,000.

Members of the House of Representatives are heading back to their home districts and to the campaign trail.

The midterm election's less than two months away.

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, NPR News.

Today, the Labor Department reports that unemployment benefits dropped sharply last week.

It's NPR News.

Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to NPR News now sponsor-free through Amazon Music, or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get NPR Plus at plus.npr.org.

In the audit, the notes to the audit, I can't record the value of that volunteer time as revenue, but I can disclose it in a footnote to say...

We had this many hours and the Department of Labor values that at $70,000 or $300,000.

To say that really communicates the value of your volunteers.

And also, I always recommend sending out a newsletter at the end of the year.

Where?

It comes from a publication issued by the Department of Labor.

Oh, really? So there are the wages in

there.

No, no, so the prevailing wage, they must have their own algorithms and they come up with this number, right? Now the question is, the point that is being made is that a native American, by that I mean, you know, citizens of the US, as opposed to an H-1B, the citizen...

can negotiate itself, right? And in the case of an H-1B, they can, but it has to be above that prevailing wage, right? So I don't understand how, it's a government, so they have the power.

Trump has the power to tell the Department of Labor, the prevailing wages, do something about it.

Because there's this widespread fallacy that those who are on H-1Bs somehow are getting paid less.

They're not in these inflationary reports.

The average hourly earning figures from the Labor Department don't entirely capture what's going on with wages either.

Adjusted for inflation, wages are up 2.8% since the pandemic.

Well, you don't have to be a mathematic genius to figure out wages aren't keeping up.

That percentage seems low.

So if your wage went up a little or not at all, you lost ground.

Mortgage rates, which are not included in the Labor Department consumer price calculations.

So when you see the inflation statistics, they don't really capture how far out of reach owning a home has become for a lot of Americans or housing.

That hasn't happened yet.

In light of a new Labor Department report showing initial unemployment claims fell below 200,000 last week.

Economists see it as an indicator of fewer layoffs.

196,000 out-of-work Americans filed their first applications for state jobless benefits in the week just ended, 10,000 fewer than the week before.

ABC News.

I'm Sherry Preston.

Some encouraging news from the Labor Department.

There were 196,000 unemployment filings last week, 10,000 fewer than the week before, and the lowest number since July.

Oil prices fell with West Texas Intermediate Crude settling near $102 a barrel.

The latest Labor Department data supports the Fed's view of economic strength as jobless claims fell unexpectedly last week to a two-month low.

A strong labor market is keeping more Fed hikes in play.

Big tech and growth stocks fueling Thursday's broad rally.

So what's going on? Bunch of journalists don't like the Trump administration because Donald Trump is mean, orange, literally Hitler.

and a bunch of employees who still work over at the Department of Justice or the FBI or the Department of War, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Labor.

Your government's too damn big.

There's lots of people who work there who don't like the president because they think he's mean, orange, literally Hitler.

The Trump administration is suing an Oklahoma nonprofit coffee company.

The US Labor Department has filed a legal challenge against Not Your Average Joe and its founder and executive director.

The popular nonprofit is particularly known for its commitment to hiring people with disabilities to work at its various shops.

Andy, what are the accusations against Not Your Average Joe?