U s bureau of labor statistics

Texas continued a 14-month streak of record employment in December, according to a Friday report from the Texas Workforce Commission. And the state’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%, the first time it fell below 4% since the forced business closures at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Texas employers added 29,500 nonfarm jobs in December, according to the TWC. Positions in education and health care accounted for over 40% of that figure with 12,700 positions, leading last month’s job growth. Financial services and manufacturing also added 6,300 and 5,500 jobs respectively. In total, there are more than 13.7 million nonfarm jobs in the state. Texas also saw strong job growth for much of 2022. According to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from November 2021 to November 2022, Texas saw the country’s second-highest increase in total nonfarm payroll employment with 657,600 jobs — a 5.1% bump. California led the country with 675,000 added positions. … [Read more...] about Texas jobless rate drops below 4% for first time since pandemic shutdowns

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 6 This flu season, Benny Matthew - a nurse at the Montefiore Medical Center emergency room in the Bronx - has often been responsible for 15 to 20 patients at a time. By 3 p.m. most days, the emergency room is often exploding with patients, Matthew said. Hospital gurneys stand inches apart. When beds run out, patients squeeze into tightly packed chairs. When the chairs run out, patients must stand. Wait times to see a doctor can be up to six hours. At the same time, the hospital is advertising more than 700 nursing positions. "We go home feeling like failures," Matthew said. "There are times when you can't sleep because you're thinking: 'Did I do anything wrong today?'" Matthew is one of more than 7,000 union nurses who went on strike in New York City last week, protesting staffing levels, which led to two of the city's largest nonprofit hospital systems to agree … [Read more...] about Why nurses say they are striking and quitting in droves

From California to Texas, border agents are increasingly seizing a surprising type of contraband from Mexico: eggs. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had more than 2,000 encounters with people trying to bring eggs into the United States from Mexico between Nov. 1 and Jan. 17, an agency spokesperson said. In the same 11-week period a year earlier, there were about 460 such encounters. The rise comes as the price of eggs in the United States has surged, driven in part by an outbreak of bird flu that was detected last February. Roger Maier, the Customs and Border Protection spokesperson, said in an email on Tuesday that the agency had noted an increase in people attempting to bring eggs to the United States from Mexico, where “they are significantly less expensive.” The 2,002 encounters involving eggs that occurred between Nov. 1 and Jan. 17 were reported by field offices in San Diego; Tucson, Arizona; Laredo, Texas; and El Paso, Texas, and they do not represent the … [Read more...] about The newest contraband crossing into the U.S. from the Mexican border: eggs