46.2 million Americans lived in poverty in 2010, roughly 15.1% of the population, according to numbers released by the US Census Bureau today. That’s nearly one in six Americans. This is the largest number of Americans in poverty in the history that the Census has recorded the data. And the rate of poverty is the [...]

The National Press Club is hosting the release of 2010 Census data right now, and as expected, states in the South and especially the West are the biggest beneficiaries, while states in the Northeast and Midwest are losing population. Eighteen states will see different apportionment as opposed to 10 years ago, while 32 states will [...]

Despite it being the week before Christmas, there are a couple huge deals coming down, even outside of Congress, which could ratify a nuclear arms reduction treaty. Tomorrow, the US Census will provide the preliminary results of their 2010 canvas, including the reapportionment of Congressional seats to the various states. So we’ll know which states [...]

The US lost 131,000 overall jobs in July thanks to the winding down of the Census, but even the private employment numbers look anemic. Private companies hired just 71,000 new workers, not enough to change the U6 jobless rate, which stayed steady at 9.5%. 14.6 million Americans remain unemployed, and at the rate of 71,000 [...]

Every 10 years, the May jobs report comes with a giant asterisk next to it, reflecting the hiring of hundreds of thousands of temporary workers to manage the US Census. Those are real, decent-paying jobs, but they last 2-3 months at the most. The June jobs report becomes a drag on the overall number, as [...]

We’re going to have a really good jobs report tomorrow, at least on the surface. Most observers predict a gain of about 500,000 jobs. But the private employment numbers show a gain of only 55,000 or so. You can attribute the discrepancy to the addition of government jobs for the US Census: For one thing, [...]

The statement from Eleanor Holmes Norton states that she has resigned herself to a rollback of DC gun control laws as the price for long-awaited Congressional representation for the district: “I have spent the last year working to get a clean D.C. Voting Rights bill, and have led the opposition to a gun attachment to [...]

A few economic data points: • Few expected a rise in retail sales in February, especially with all the winter storms. But it happened. The US Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.3% last month, whereas forecasts had predicted a fall of 0.2%. The rise, the biggest since November, fuelled hopes that economic recovery is [...]