Amazon Now Has More Than 341,000 Employees -- Added 110,000 People Last Year (geekwire.com) 114
Amazon added more than 110,000 employees during the past year, topping 341,000 people as of the end of 2016 thanks largely to a significant increase in the Seattle-based tech giant's network of fulfillment centers around the world and further expansion of its businesses in several overseas new markets. From a report: Amazon employed just 32,000 people globally five years ago. Amazon's net growth of more than 110,000 people during the past year almost rivals Microsoft's total employment of 120,000 people as of Dec. 31. That comparison of Microsoft and Amazon isn't apples-to-apples given the differences in their businesses, but it gives a sense of the scope of Amazon's employment base. Amazon employs about 40,000 people in Washington state, compared to 45,000 for Microsoft. Amazon doesn't show any signs of slowing down. The company said previously that it plans to add another 100,000 full-time jobs in the U.S. over the next 18 months.
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ummmmmm YOU WILL LIKE IT TOO OR ELSE-----trump
now everyone can has job
You are deeply confused. This was the result of Obamacare. Part-time Low Paying Jobs for Everyone! Because employers could no longer afford healthcare for their workers. Read. Learn. Understand.
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You might want to check your source (unless it is straight out of the ass) and do a little more intelligent reading. part time unemployment went up 0.5% during Obamacare. And that is attributed more to people like me, who didn't need a full time job, except to get affordable insurance. I am now trying to build my own business instead of needing a full time job, that didn't leave time to try my own thing.
Re:So that's bad, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jobs are good, but these trends in employment resonate on target with those who say we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
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we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
And also, kids today are lazy and don't want to work and things don't last as long as they used to and get a belt for your pants for Pete's sake!
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we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
And also, kids today are lazy and don't want to work and things don't last as long as they used to and get a belt for your pants for Pete's sake!
Kids (and often adults) are indeed lazy, if you allow them to be. Sometimes the most difficult thing in the world is to be tough on your own children, but you are doing them no service if you become that buddy parent.
I explained to mine how lucky they were not to be born into some family with great wealth; for now, they will get to learn how to do something other than write checks.
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I wish I had some mod points for you.
As a parent, I am constantly badgering my boy to build skills that his peers don't have, so later he can have the job that his peers wish they had. He's got it in his head that he is going to be a youtube star when he grows up. I see this as the same as moving to Hollywood to become a star, and tell him this almost daily. I sound like my father when I do it, and it kills me.
On the flip side, he's also learned how to solve his own computer problems and navigate the web fo
Labor intensive jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs are good, but these trends in employment resonate on target with those who say we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
Well that's what Trump wants. He wants to "bring back manufacturing jobs" to the US. Never mind that the factory jobs that left the US did so because of high labor rates and the only way to get them back and keep them is to pay people competitive wages... for China. So if you're good with paying people $2/hour then we can bring back all kinds of jobs. But they won't be ones with good wages. The ones with good wages aren't for slapping together happy meal toys.
Now if you want high paying jobs then you have to invest in education, research, infrastructure, etc and train people to do jobs that are worth more than unskilled assembly work will ever justify.
Re:Labor intensive jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind that the factory jobs that left the US did so because of high labor rates and the only way to get them back and keep them is to pay people competitive wages... for China.
Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China, as Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle. But the new factories in the US require fewer workers and those workers must possess a college degree, eliminating the vast majority of Trump voters who are eagerly waiting for the 1980's manufacturing jobs to return.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html [nytimes.com]
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well the cost-of-living and lifestyle demands of a emerging country used to be a check-and-balance. It is what slowed the outsourcing of jobs to japan, taiwan, and hong kong in the 80s and 90s. China was more of a concern since they had a population in the billions. Demanding a middle-class lifestyle falls apart when there are still billions lined up to take your job. I call it a quality-of-life inflation, but china and india have too much population for this to work in a fashion of self correction.
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It's clear you are some relative of the owners (daddy is the owner?) of this site. Your posts are the most vacuous, information free, clueless low-IQ millennial drivel I've ever seen. Coupled with your vast experience writing 40 lines of Python code once seems to make you think you know anything about nerds. All your posts get "upvoted" heavily by Daddy, that much is plain and clear. It simply precipitates the end of this site.
You must be new around here. Turn in your geek creds and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
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That is exactly what a Daddys Boy who's Daddy owns the company would say. Exactly.
Uh, no. My comment is a classic slam that is familiar to any Slashdotter who has been on the site since 1999.
The extremely low comment count proves that.
This is Slashdot, not an Alt-Right site. Get lost.
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But who are you to tell someone to Get Lost?
I've been here since 1999. Now get off my lawn!
I too have noticed a large drop in overall comment counts in /. as well.
Goatse ain't as popular on /. as it used to be.
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You have a very high user id, NO WAY you have been here since 1999.
I've been reading /. for 18 years. The other website I've read just as long is The New York Times.
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A high-deductible health insurance plan without subsidies costs only about $4,000 per year. Employers aren't required to pay for insurance for anyone other than the employee, so that $25,000 number is pure fiction.
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You do not need a college degree to operate a CAM process.
A "CAM process"? Sounds like you don't work in manufacturing because that's not a term of art used by anyone actually in the industry. And yes you do need either substantial experience or a certification if you want to get a job working on machines where CAM is relevant. Nobody is going to hire you with nothing more than a high school diploma to do that sort of work these days under normal circumstances.
The NYTimes is flat out pushing an agenda. Manufacturers can not afford to pay some one 30,000$ per year and also pay $25,000 for their family health insurance.
I'm not aware of any manufacturing company that does pay "$25K for family health insurance" per employ
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Never mind that the factory jobs that left the US did so because of high labor rates and the only way to get them back and keep them is to pay people competitive wages... for China.
Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China, as Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle. But the new factories in the US require fewer workers and those workers must possess a college degree, eliminating the vast majority of Trump voters who are eagerly waiting for the 1980's manufacturing jobs to return.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html [nytimes.com]
In the meantime, Common F. Sense is eagerly waiting for someone to justify why factory workers suddenly need a college degree.
When college goes from optional to mandatory, it's time to start aligning the price of that degree alongside K-12 education. Fuck the greedy institutions who feel burying students in college debt for a decade or two is somehow the "right" answer.
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Never mind that the factory jobs that left the US did so because of high labor rates and the only way to get them back and keep them is to pay people competitive wages... for China.
Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China, as Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle. But the new factories in the US require fewer workers and those workers must possess a college degree, eliminating the vast majority of Trump voters who are eagerly waiting for the 1980's manufacturing jobs to return.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html [nytimes.com]
In the meantime, Common F. Sense is eagerly waiting for someone to justify why factory workers suddenly need a college degree.
When college goes from optional to mandatory, it's time to start aligning the price of that degree alongside K-12 education. Fuck the greedy institutions who feel burying students in college debt for a decade or two is somehow the "right" answer.
There are 33 public universities in the State of California alone. There are over 600 public universities in the entire US. There are over 1000 public community colleges in the US. If you are/were buried in college debt for multiple decades then perhaps that is your own fault? Two years of community college followed by two years of a public university should not cost you a fortune. If you work while you go to school, you can save even more money. I worked full-time every year except for my senior year
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Never mind that the factory jobs that left the US did so because of high labor rates and the only way to get them back and keep them is to pay people competitive wages... for China.
Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China, as Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle. But the new factories in the US require fewer workers and those workers must possess a college degree, eliminating the vast majority of Trump voters who are eagerly waiting for the 1980's manufacturing jobs to return.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html [nytimes.com]
In the meantime, Common F. Sense is eagerly waiting for someone to justify why factory workers suddenly need a college degree.
When college goes from optional to mandatory, it's time to start aligning the price of that degree alongside K-12 education. Fuck the greedy institutions who feel burying students in college debt for a decade or two is somehow the "right" answer.
...I know that the cost of public universities has increased since I finished school, but there's no requirement that you become overloaded with debt to get a bachelors degree.
Based on how you've marginalized the cost of higher education, I can tell you have no idea how expensive it has become to get a bachelors degree, a cost that has risen over 200% in the last 30 years. Not to mention actually landing a job after you spend $40,000+ getting a degree, unlike history when a degree all but guaranteed you employment. There's a reason outstanding college debt is now measured in trillions, and working a menial job through college used to be a way to avoid taking loans. That's hard
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Never mind that the factory jobs that left the US did so because of high labor rates and the only way to get them back and keep them is to pay people competitive wages... for China.
Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China, as Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle. But the new factories in the US require fewer workers and those workers must possess a college degree, eliminating the vast majority of Trump voters who are eagerly waiting for the 1980's manufacturing jobs to return.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html [nytimes.com]
In the meantime, Common F. Sense is eagerly waiting for someone to justify why factory workers suddenly need a college degree.
When college goes from optional to mandatory, it's time to start aligning the price of that degree alongside K-12 education. Fuck the greedy institutions who feel burying students in college debt for a decade or two is somehow the "right" answer.
...I know that the cost of public universities has increased since I finished school, but there's no requirement that you become overloaded with debt to get a bachelors degree.
Based on how you've marginalized the cost of higher education, I can tell you have no idea how expensive it has become to get a bachelors degree, a cost that has risen over 200% in the last 30 years. Not to mention actually landing a job after you spend $40,000+ getting a degree, unlike history when a degree all but guaranteed you employment. There's a reason outstanding college debt is now measured in trillions, and working a menial job through college used to be a way to avoid taking loans. That's hardly the case today.
I'll bet you and are not that far apart in age. I have a bachelors degree. My family was incredibly poor and I started paying my own way for almost everything (except shelter) at 16. By the time I was 19, I was completely independent and in school. I graduated with honors in 3.5 years, and had less than $10,000 in student loans. All while working full time and without any scholarships or grants. I'm not marginalizing the cost of school. I've been there and done that. I did not drink while in school, ta
Eduation for manufacturing (Score:2)
In the meantime, Common F. Sense is eagerly waiting for someone to justify why factory workers suddenly need a college degree.
They don't but they do need more than a high school diploma. Manufacturing these days isn't the same as it was 20 years ago and even less so than 40 years ago. You don't need a college degree for every job in manufacturing but for any job that pays better than minimum wage you probably do need at least some post high school training, vocational education, certifications, and in some cases an associates degree. Modern manufacturing isn't some place to dump uneducated workers with no skills or training. N
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Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China, as Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle.
While that is not wrong that Chinese workers want a middle class lifestyle, there is more to manufacturing jobs leaving China than that. To get manufacturing started there, the Chinese government offered huge tax incentives to foreign companies willing to set up shop. China has now acquired enough internal expertise to make a lot of those things themselves, such as TVs for example, so the tax incentives and other things done to bring in the foreigners are going away so that they can shift more and more pr
What manufacturing companies need (Score:2)
Manufacturing jobs are returning to the US because labor is getting too expensive in China,
Not as a general proposition they are not. The labor intensive work is simply moving to other countries with lower labor rates. Sure you might see a little here or there make it's way back to the US but in the big picture labor intensive manufacturing will move to wherever labor rates are low. That is not the USA. I've been all over southeast Asia. A lot of work that was in China is moving to places like Vietnam or India or other places with lower labor rates than China. Though rising, China's labor r
Re:Labor intensive jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Example in some places you need to have signs approved by a board that meets once a month. (I have been part of this process)
The rational solution would be (if you want regulations) to have the requirements clearly laid out. Example: The sign
may be no bigger than x
allowable fonts are:
allowable colors are:
sign must include x and y with a font size no smaller than z.
Should company want something difference then they can go and get a variance.
When you simplify things to simply "labor" costs you are missing the crux of the matter.
How long it takes to open a store, and the hurdles you have to jump through, is FAR more expensive and FAR more off-putting than you think.
Why jobs leave (Score:2)
Jobs didn't leave the US simply because of high labor rates but also taxation.
That's mostly nonsense. The tax burden on a US based manufacturing company making products for US consumption or for export is minimal at best. And large scale manufacturing concerns get substantial tax breaks on their CapEx and plant investments as a general rule. Taxation is a real issue but it has little to do with why jobs leave the US in most cases. It might be the cherry on top but it isn't the big issue in most cases.
Jobs that leave the US typically do so for 1 of 2 reasons. Labor costs or compa
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These regulations are burdensome and their affect is dire.
Labor costs are not simply wages. It's also the administrative costs; the bureaucracy involved in maintaining a workforce. Some regulations make sense. And many do not. You keep thinking it has to do with wages given t
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Unfortunately, these jobs [glassdoor.com] pay about like Walmart employee.
Jobs are good, but these trends in employment resonate on target with those who say we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
What do you expect after 8 years of trying to "remake our economy"...
trying? No credit for rebuilding after the greatest collapse since the collapse in 1929? No credit for the stock market not just recovering, but at record highs? No credit for unemployment falling to under 5% (Yes, we all know that's funny counting, but when unemployment was over 10% in 2008, that was funny counting then too.)
I don't know how your 401K is doing, but mine has grown 10% per year, on average, over the last eight years. That's exclusive of what I've added over the last eight years.
... in ways that make close-minded, sheltered, WHITE suburban "progressives" happy?
versus the
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Unfortunately, these jobs [glassdoor.com] pay about like Walmart employee.
Jobs are good, but these trends in employment resonate on target with those who say we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
Which generation is that? They've been saying "this generation won't do as well as their parents" since after the baby boomers...
Re:So that's bad, right? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Unfortunately, these jobs [glassdoor.com] pay about like Walmart employee.
Jobs are good, but these trends in employment resonate on target with those who say we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
Go ahead and type "software" into that search box at the top of the page. Doesn't look quite like slave wages from here. Yeah, I know that most of the jobs are warehouse type jobs, and they don't pay much. I'm guessing that's why, when I was a kid, my father told me to get an education so I could work with my brain instead of my back.
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Today if you're foolish enough to get an education
Heh. It certainly appears that I should congratulate you on not falling into that pernicious trap.
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I'm thinking of updating my resume to remove all of my advanced degrees in computer science, and just put NONE under EDUCATION. Because as far as I can tell, having an education is not helping me in the slightest, and all those degrees are only holding me back.
If pretending to be uneducated doesn't work, maybe I should change my name to something like Sanjeep and show up to interviews in brownface makeup. Pretending to be stupid isn't good enough, I need to signal to interviewers that I'm cheap as shit to
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Go ahead and type "software" into that search box at the top of the page. Doesn't look quite like slave wages from here. Yeah, I know that most of the jobs are warehouse type jobs, and they don't pay much. I'm guessing that's why, when I was a kid, my father told me to get an education so I could work with my brain instead of my back.
On the other hand, at least until recently, working with your brain at Amazon seems to have its own challenges -- Amazon promises to change its 'Hunger Games' employee review process [businessinsider.com]. Don't know if things are any better yet. I'd make a President Snow -- Jeff Bezos comparison joke, but the hair is all wrong.
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working with your brain at Amazon seems to have its own challenges
Working with your brain anywhere is challenging. I lived through many years of stack ranking, and never saw any evidence of the sort of dog-eat-dog behaviors described in the Business Insider article. What I did see was managers who kept a small number of underperformers on staff in order to pad their merit raise allocations so they could give their high performers better raises. But then, I never worked for Amazon.
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Working with your brain anywhere is challenging.
No. Working with your brain is not challenging. You'd know that if you had a brain and weren't an imposter, smart guy.
If you're not being challenged, you're not really working with your brain; you're just turning a crank.
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Jobs are good, but these trends in employment resonate on target with those who say we are the first generation in a long time who will not leave a better life for our children.
According to The Economist, only about 13% of jobs left the US due to trade. 87% were lost to automation.
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then Trump will take the blame./quote
Did you just come out of your cozy cave where you were hibernating for the last year? The world doesn't work the same way now as when you went in. Welcome to the future... we have Moon Pies.
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You need to compare it against the likes of Walmart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] says Walmart has 2.3 million employees.
Why I Sold AMZN (Score:1)
I got out of Amazon stock last quarter after seeing the explosive growth in the payroll. Clearly Amazon has focused too much on hiring to fulfill logistics needs rather than the deployment of automated technology. People are very expensive, especially compared to the low value of material handling work. I know Amazon warehouses are already highly-automated, but Bezos really dropped the ball last year in hiring so many - and many of us investors wondered if all of that hiring was politically-motivated rather
Meh. (Score:1)
As one who worked security for an Amazon warehouse for a while, they have some of the worst employee turnover I've seen.
Apart from a few who stick because they can get nowhere else, most go within three months and won't ever return.
Bastards! (Score:1)
-Net- increase or decrease? (Score:1)
The real question is this: When you consider how many jobs were lost to Amazon as Amazon grew larger and created new jobs, was it an overall net increase or an overall net decrease?
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Amazon won by being more efficient than the companies it wiped out. That frequently means they use fewer employees or pay less. It's impossible to say, but I suspect Amazon has caused a net loss in jobs.
Counter to that though, it has probably made, for those of us still with decent-paying jobs, an increase in our quality of life and lowering our cost of living. So bad for some, good for others.
100,000 more jobs in the next 18 months (Score:3)
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The left which used to argue that cheap Chinese imports were killing American jobs, is now arguing that ending those cheap Chinese imports is going to kill American jobs.
The right which used to argue that cheap Chinese imports gave people more money to spend thus creating more American jobs, is now arguing that ending those cheap Chinese imports will preserve and create American jobs.
You can't ha
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It's not flip-flopping at all. You are ignoring the passage of time and incorrectly treating all jobs as the same. Let's try this:
Cheap Chinese imports killed American manufacturing jobs. Companies adapted and hired mininum-wage workers to handle the imported goods. Now, ending those cheap imports will eliminate many of those newer mininum-wage jobs. However, it is not a given that the manufacturing jobs will return. And thanks to automation we know they won't.
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It's fascinating to watch how both sides are hypocritical and have flip-flopped their arguments on this..
It's probably because this isn't a black and white issue- both sides are correct. Yes, a lot of things are made in China BECAUSE it's cheaper to make them over there. This does result in lack of American jobs.
On the other hand. Manufacturing jobs tend to be lower wage and unappealing for most people. It's better than being unemployed, but there's a reason more evolved economies tend to move away from them and why China is, itself, trying to move away from a manufacturing dominated economy.
Also, putting
Calculate full time equivalent employees (Score:2)
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If you instead gradually ramp up those legal requirements, then there's no spike in employee cost as they reach 40 hours, and thus no disincentive for companies to have 40 hou
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only have second hand knowledge (Score:2)
I don't know personally, but have spoken to more than a few of their employees who claim that Amazon has a huge reputation for abusing, overworking, and underpaying their employees. I guess its more important to build that mars lander, than to treat employees like humans.
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Probably the same reason people find themselves living with people that treat them like shit. Sometimes they just feel stuck. You have a job, benefits suck, hours suck, they force you to work overtime and not claim the time for fear of losing the job (alleged by a 5 people i know). You're paycheck to paycheck, you've got a family to support, your spouse also works but the two incomes still barely keep the bills paid. You're so strapped that you even go in sick for fear of missing a days pay will put you sho
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I guess it's all in who you know, and what their job is. A coworker of mine recently (well 6 months ago) left to work for Amazon. Got almost a 50% bump in his already exorbitant salary and every time we talk he can't stop gushing about how great his new office is and how amazing the benefits/hours/etc. are.
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must be, the people I know work at a distribution center nearby. They describe the climate as walmart on pms. Maybe just the corp headquarters is fun?
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I, for one, welcome our new fascist overlord, Donald Trump.
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That kind of "fake news"?
So far Trump has not commented on the last jobs report from the Obama Administration, showing 227K jobs added to the economy and upticking the employment rate 4.8%. Trump did tweet about everything else at 3AM this morning to distract from the good news.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/03/the-unemployment-rate-ticked-up-slightly-cue-the-trump-twitter-distraction/ [washingtonpost.com]