From: The U.S. Census: County Business Patterns (CBP) is an annual series that provides subnational economic data by industry. This series includes the number of establishments, employment during the week of March 12, first quarter payroll, and annual payroll. This data is useful for studying the economic activity of small areas; analyzing economic changes over time; and as a benchmark for other statistical series, surveys, and databases between economic censuses. Businesses use the data for analyzing market potential, measuring the effectiveness of sales and advertising programs, setting sales quotas, and developing budgets. Government agencies use the data for administration and planning.
ZIP Code Business Patterns data is available shortly after the release of County Business Patterns. It provides the number of establishments by employment-size classes by detailed industry in the U.S.
More and more things are being made here;U.S. Census data shows manufacturing in the U.S. (and Texas) continues to rebound
No matter what data you look at, manufacturing in the U.S. continues to increase. Sales for all U.S. manufacturers exceeded $1.69 trillion in the 1st quarter of 2012. In comparison, 1st quarter sales of manufacturing goods had falling to about $1.2 trillion at the deepest point of the ‘great recession’ in 2009.
Manufacturing levels have reached, and slightly exceeded pre-recession economic output in nominal or non-inflation adjusted terms. Before the recession, manufacturing 1st quarter sales were at $1.6 trillion in nominal or non-inflation adjusted terms.
So where is a good source for manufacturing output information?
http://www.census.gov/econ/manufacturing.html
The U.S. Census industry portal is also a good source
http://www.census.gov/econ/isp/
Bitcoin being studied by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
While the legitimacy of the bitcoin is still being debated, a number of major financial institutions are keeping a watchful eye on its development.
Maria A. Arias, Research Analyst, and Yongseok Shin, Senior Economist both of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, recently published a paper titled, “There Are Two Sides to Every Coin—Even to the Bitcoin, a Virtual Currency”, that discussed the bitcoin in more detail.
U.S. Dollar Value of 1 Bitcoin
Cyber-currency and the latest gold rush
The idea of a global cyber-currency is taking hold at least in some circles. Bitcoins, which is a digital fiat currency, has increased in value. On some exchanges the value of a single digital bitcoin currency has increased to over a $1,000.
So what is a bitcoin? According to the BBC World news , Bitcoin is a new kind of currency that ican be thought of as virtual tokens rather than physical coins or note. Like all currencies its value is determined by how much people are willing to exchange it for.
The bitcoin market is composed of miners, traders, and users of bitcoin. Like gold or commodity based currencies, miners discover new bitcoin. Bitcoin is mined using complex computer and mathematical algorithms. Like supplies of gold, the complexity of the mining process keeps the supply of bitcoin stable.
Currently there are about 11 million bitcoins in existence. Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and untracable. Sites like,spendbitcoin , provide lists of vendors that accept bitcoin. The vendors include internet services, manufacturing, and legal services.
Stacked employee ratings and performance bell-curves
Some employers grade their employee’s job performance on a curve. In these systems, like back in college, the employer generally sets the number of A, B,C’s etc. to assign to the employees performance. Proponents argue that the system is more fair and adds to employee moral in the long run. Neal Buethe of
Briggs and Morgan,
and
Nancy Gunzenhauser and Jeffrey Landes of Epstein Becker Green
discuss some of the legal issues to consider when adopting these types of systems.
Economist wades into climate change debate
William Nordhaus, a Yale economist studies the economics of climate change. Prof. Nordhaus’ work studies the inter-workings of climate change projections, pollution and global economic growth. He offers a number of projections and calculations of the trade-offs between taxes, climate change and economic growth.
Reviews of the book:
Misclassification damages and the half time OT premium
Some recent cases on calculating damages in OT misclassification case.
When Salaried Employees Were Misclassified, Damages Properly Calculated At “Half-Time” Rather Than Time And A Half
Suncor increases sand tar oil production; using rail instead of pipeline to move product
The New York Times reports that Suncor, a leading Canadian oil sands producer, will increase production in 2014. The company anticipates using rail instead of pipeline to move oil to its refineries.
The Suncor website provides a detailed description of the oil sands process.
From their website:
Near Fort McMurray, Alta., Suncor recovers bitumen from oil sands through its mining and in situ operations. The bitumen from both operations is then upgraded to refinery-ready feedstock and diesel fuel.
The in situ process uses horizontal wells to reach the oil sands ore. The top well injects steam to heat the reservoir, allowing the bitumen to flow to the lower well where it is collected and piped to upgrading facilities. Graphic:
FLSA Regular Rate Calculations Accounting for Bonuses: Part 3 of 3.
Example #2—Nurse Retention bonuses (Part 3 of 3)
A health care organization’s nursing department gives hourly paid LPNs and RNs a $2,000 bonus after being employed for 6 months to both retain and attract more nursing personnel. In this instance, the bonus will be included in the regular rate calculation during weeks in the period in which overtime was worked. The key is to know how the bonus was earned. That is, was it a one time bonus? Or was it for work that was performed over a series of months. In this example is the latter.
The $2,000 retention bonus described above was earned over 6 months or 26 weeks. Equivalently, the weekly bonus can thought of as a weekly bonus of $76.92 ($2,000 ÷ 26 weeks). If an employee works overtime during the 26-week period, the increase in the regular rate is calculated by dividing $76.92 by the total hours worked during the overtime week.
The procedure for calculating OT is the same as described in Part 2 of this series. If the employee worked 10 hours of overtime ( a total of 50 hours of work in the pay period) in their 9th week of employment, the employee would be due an additional $7.70 in overtime earning in that time period. The calculation is as follows:
1. Calculate the increase in regular rate due to the bonus
$76.92 ($2,000 ÷ 26 weeks) ÷ 50 hours = $1.54 (increase in the regular rate)
Note: The daily bonus is spread equally of all the hours worked in the time period where there is OT.
2. Calculate the increase in the half time (.5) portion of the OT premium
$1.54 x ½ = $ .77 (increase in the additional half-time premium)
3. Calculate the addition OT premium due to the individual.
$ .77 x 10 hours of overtime worked = $7.70 (increase in overtime earnings due to the bonus)
The calculation can also be performed as described in yesterday’s post. The results will be the same. The key is to recognize that the bonus is spread over the time period that the bonus was earned.
FLSA Regular Rate Calculations Accounting for Bonuses: Part 2 of 3.
Excerpted from article by: Stephen Bruce, Ph.D., PHR
Example 1: Health care workers
An health care facility for the disabled pays its employees on a biweekly basis. If employees work all the hours that they are scheduled to work in a pay period, they are given a $100 bonus. The employees must work all the hours in the pay period to receive the bonus. Employees are paid $12 per hour and work 56 hours a week. To compute this employee’s regular rate under the 40-hour FLSA overtime standard, the employer adds half of the biweekly bonus ($50) to the employee’s earnings for that week. The employers earnings are the hourly rate times the total hours worked in this example.
The resulting total compensation would be divided by the total hours the employee worked during that week to determine the regular rate. The steps are as follows.
1. Convert the biweekly attendance bonus to a weekly amount:
$100 (biweekly attendance bonus) ÷ 2 (weeks) = $50 (weekly bonus equivalent)
2. Calculate total weekly compensation:
$672 (56 hours @ $12) + $50 weekly bonus equivalent = $722
3. Calculate the regular rate:
$722 total weekly compensation ÷ 56 hours worked = $12.89 (regular rate)
Note: That the regular rate is higher than the person’s base rate in this pay period because of the additional non-discretionary bonus that they received during the pay period.
4. Calculate the overtime premium owed on the regular rate:
$12.89 (regular rate) x ½ = $6.45 (half-time premium)
Note: In this setting the overtime premium refers only to the .5 portion of the total 1.5x overtime.
5. Calculate the overtime rate based on the regular rate:
$12.89 (regular rate) + $6.45 (half-time premium) = $19.34 (overtime rate)
Note: The regular rate is used throughout the calculation and not the individual’s base rate.
6. Calculate total earnings:
40 (straight time hours) x $12.89 (regular rate) = $515.60 (straight time earnings)
16 (overtime hours) x $19.34 (overtime rate) = $309.44 (overtime earnings)
Total earnings for week one = $825.04 ($515.60 + $309.44)
Total earnings for week two = $825.04 ($515.60 + $309.44)
Total earnings for biweekly period = $1,650.08 ($825.04 + $825.04)