News about health often focuses on the negative: scary new flu viruses, incurable diseases, dashed hopes for miracle drugs. Maybe that's because we have such high expectations that doctors and scientists can fix anything. But amid all that bad news, not to mention the acrimony over health-care reform, it's easy to overlook how much progress has been made in recent years.

Teenage employment has fallen sharply since July. The most recent minimum wage hike may be an important factor. Many economists expect the minimum wage, if it has any effect, to (among other things) raise employer costs and therefore reduce employment, especially among those who are likely to work in minimum-wage jobs, like teenagers and restaurant workers.

As a new entrant, retail medical clinics represent a threat to many traditional health care industry stakeholders; however, to consumers, health plans and employers they offer an important care alternative with a strong value proposition.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released statistics on job markets around the industrialized world over the last 40 years. One interesting tidbit: While Americans sometimes complain that the country doesn’t “make” anything anymore — a sentiment related to manufacturing’s long-term slide in this country — they should know that declines in manufacturing jobs are common in the rest of the developed world,... More

The surtax that has been proposed in the House of Representatives' health care bill would hit a approximately 0.35% of all tax returns, those with an adjusted gross income of $1 million or more, $500,000 or more for single filers, the Tax Foundation estimates. Above is the foundation's estimate of what percentage of income taxes those impacted by the surtax would pay if rates stay as they are, and if the Bush tax cuts are... More

Chapter 20 of my favorite textbook has a section on antipoverty programs and work incentives. One basic point is that when multiple income-based programs are piled on top on one another, the implicit marginal tax rate can reach or even exceed 100 percent.

The economy lost another 190,000 jobs in October, showing the pace of losses is slower than it was last winter.The chart  shows job losses in this recession compared to recent ones, with the dark blue line representing the current downturn. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has had a net loss of about 5.3 percent of its nonfarm payroll jobs.

When the Obama stimulus plan was proposed, the president's economic team put out a report that purported to show what would happen with and without the fiscal stimulus. The chart above is from page four that report, together with the actual results over the past couple months.

Over the last five years, the economies of Wal-Mart countries outside the United States have grown 40 percent faster than the world average. So what's going on? Does the ability to buy giant bags of Froot Loops at cut-rate prices inspire economic growth?