CEI Today: Jobs report analysis, Europe’s youth unemployment, and medical junk science

UNEMPLOYMENT & REGULATORY COSTS – IAIN MURRAY & HANS BADER

CEI.org: Jobs Report Doesn’t Tell Full Story, Regulations Still Prevent Real Jobs Growth

Unemployment fell below 8 percent for the first time in four years last month, according to the September jobs report from the Department of Labor. The economy gained 114,000 jobs in September, which helped lower the unemployment rate from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent.

But, as CEI Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray pointed out, job numbers are almost always inflated this time of year because of holiday season hiring. And, as Senior Counsel Hans Bader noted, many people have given up on full-time employment and taken part-time jobs.

EUROPE’S JOBLESS YOUTH – MATTHEW MELCHIORRE

EU Observer: Jobless youth – southern Europe’s ticking time bomb

As Europe hangs on every public statement about the possibility of more bailouts from the European Central Bank or German Chancellor Angela Merkel, some investors don’t see the wood for the trees. The focus on short-term stability ignores southern Europe’s powder keg of jobless youth which is set to undermine workforce productivity and pension affordability over the next decade. Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy top the list in eurozone youth unemployment.

Southern Europe is not helpless in the face of the problem.

Countries need to liberalise their labour markets to make giving proper, full time jobs for young employees more attractive to employers.

FOOD WARS – ANGELA LOGOMASINI

Openmarket.org: Medical Junk Science: Canned Veggies May Make Kids Fat

Can feeding your child canned soup and vegetables make make her fat? According to study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), it just might — but only if your child is white. That’s the latest junk science “finding” from yet another study designed to condemn the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Despite obvious flaws with the study and the implausibility of its findings, newspapers around the nation, news websites, blogs and others continue to declare that there is “more evidence” that BPA poses a health problem.