The courts should not be in the business of enforcing private secrets to the detriment of the public interest.
I agree with you somewhat, but the courts should be in the business of enforcing contracts, though--that's one of their most basic functions, and what most civil law is based on, whether that contract is express or implied. When a third party profits from the violation of an agreement between two parties, the courts have a role in determining if the violation was facilitated by the third party directly (extremely serious), indirectly (less serious), or not at all (still worrisome). Without enforcement against the third parties, the risk to employees wanting to take the result of hard work and serious investment and go to another company is almost nil. Sure, they might be sued for the value of the trade secret in terms of lost sales, but the other company could fully indemnify them for it.
Further, while trade secrets are commonly associated with big business (like recipes for Coca-Cola and KFC chicken), they also provide powerful protection for small companies that might otherwise be stolen out of existence by larger companies. A large competitor able to outspend a small one on grabbing trade secrets in deals with employees without repercussion from the courts could easily establish a monopoly. Given the rapid shifts from one administration to the next pertaining to antitrust law, waiting for the government to step in to break up the trust is a fool's errand. Hence, the value of trade secret protection built into the law.
Waymo isn't a patent troll, though, as they're not an NPE (non-practicing entity). They're doing active research, pushing the field, and have put cars on the road to various degrees. They're not ready to sell systems, but merely suing over an allegedly stolen patent doesn't make them a patent troll.
Tech workers, yes, but I meant the whole range of open jobs. Recruiters exist for more than just IT, and they're telling companies that they have to offer more than they're used to providing if they want people to move to fill the positions.
I'm not sure if the resume farms (many of which were actually located in Asia) have thinned out recently or they gave up trying to contact me. I still get the occasional ping from LinkedIn, but they tend to be in-house recruiters, with very few hits from even the larger recruiting firms. I still get calls every few months from resumes I last updated almost a decade ago.
I ran into a job description in 1999 that was looking for a Java developer with ten years of experience. I lost all confidence in hiring managers having a clue right then.
Recruiting farms that rely on resume spamming have annihilated the market by setting highly unrealistic expectations. There are a few good recruiters out there, and most of them are telling their clients that they need to boost their pay or reduce their requirements (or both). No one is going to move hundreds of miles on their own dime for a $30K job, but they might for $40K or $50K. Look at the cost of leaving the position open, including opportunity costs, morale issues, and turnover increases, and see if that isn't worth $20K.
The XB-70 also lost out to ICBMs. The whole point of the Valkyrie was to speed past Soviet air defenses (or possibly stay out of range--dropping from 70,000 feet at a decent speed gets you a good range even on a dumb bomb). If ICBMs hadn't worked out, the Valkyrie (or some variant of it) might have had a chance. As it was, the Defense Department largely ended development of large, high-speed aircraft.
There are a lot of things we can do with regular displays, and yet we choose to carry tablets and phones with us to handle them instead. It's lighter and more convenient to do so. The same thing will happen with this tech: it will become the lighter, more convenient way to do things, plus it will provide a free hand that's currently used to manipulate a device. There's also a difference between moving your head to look over at a monitor and glancing up with your eyes to see what's projected.
You're also missing out on the augmented reality possibilities. The surgeon could get an overlay of information from the latest MRI or CT scan; the factory worker could see how the parts should go together, perhaps getting an artificial coloring for the next part needed; the floor supervisor could get an overlay of component flows with immediate data of what the last parts were to move merely my looking in that direction.
Glass was an invention without a market, but that's not the same as a useless invention. The concept will become part of our everyday life.
Well, maybe not yours. But almost everyone else's.
No, you didn't fix it. You changed it to something completely different. It wasn't a matter of mismarketing, but of no one having an understanding of where it would have fit. It's not that these ideas weren't there, but that they couldn't be done at the time. The capabilities just didn't exist, and they only barely do now. Google just kind of threw it out into the world to see what people would come up with, but that turned out to be a very small list. It wasn't until they had the real-world failure that they pulled back into a targeted lab, looked at new hardware, and figured out some new ways to do things that it started to become marginally useful. That use will grow over time as others get into the arena (HoloLens could be a big player) and the tools become easier to use.
And that's your particular case, but not everyone's. Here are some things that could work:
- A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.
- A factory worker could have a list of steps to follow to complete an assembly
- A floor supervisor could monitor progress of the line before or after their location
- Even you could step back a safe distance, triggering a reappearance of the display that you can check, which then disappears when you approach the machine to ensure that you have no visual distractions.
All of this could also be recorded or streamed for training, troubleshooting, or performance checks.
Glass was just ahead of its time and suffered from being the first to market, as many such efforts do. The same privacy complaints occurred as soon as cameras began appearing in phones, and got louder as smartphones became more common. Underskirt photos led to attempts to require that all devices make a sound when a picture is taken, even when the device is silenced. Now, no one bats an eye at smartphones. I could record everything in front of me just by putting the phone in my chest pocket, and you'd never know, compared to Glass with its LED. With augmented reality becoming easier to process and the applications growing, it's only a matter of time before Glass, HoloLens, and a dozen other products that rely on cameras are ubiquitous. The first app with universal appeal will be a game, but GPS directions will follow soon, and then you'll be able to pop menus out of restaurants in your field of vision.
It's going to happen. It will probably be a few years yet, but it's going to be come the norm.
Card-only places are uncommon even in big cities, but they're getting more common: food trucks, new restaurants, and a few shops here and there. It's a slow change, but it's happening anyway.
A tiny segment, though. Most people run plastic, whether credit or debit, and it's getting to the point now that pulling out cash is like it used to be when the person ahead of you pulled out a checkbook: people behind sigh, roll their eyes, and wonder when this person is going to get out of the stone ages.
While it's generally true that cash doesn't fail, I have been in a few places that declined cash and took plastic only, at least experimentally. It reduces security costs and reduces the opportunities for employees to steal.
He said the reason that he gave it up is that he's running two companies (and had a hand in a third when SolarCity was separate), and he didn't have the time to get involved in a another large-scale company. This isn't hard to believe given the rapid expansion of SpaceX and Tesla. Even Musk only has 24 hours in a day, and even he has to sleep sometimes (though finding out he's taking something like Armodafinil wouldn't surprise me). He's since started two smaller companies (the Boring Company and Neuralink) that have tight focuses and are, by most accounts, being largely handled by other people.
Title case in headlines isn't new. A check of the New York Times headlines from a random date (April 7, 1936) shows that they used title case back then.
Minimum wage still applies in restaurants, but it works differently. In a tipped position, the minimum wage is lower, but the final payout after tips must still match or exceed minimum wage overall. For non-tipped positions (cooks and other non-serving staff), they still have to meet the non-tipped minimum wage.
I think the point is that we may not have developed the technology. The first radio telescope wasn't developed until the 1930s, more than 300 years after the first recorded use of a telescope for astronomical purposes. The first gravitational telescope discovery came barely more than a year ago.
I'm not holding my breath for the imminent discovery of intelligent alien life, but I also realize that how we see the universe will change over the next four hundred years probably at least as much as it's changed over the last four hundred years. Maybe in that time, we'll discover a signal, or someone else will discover ours. That's being open to the discovery of an alternate method of observation with one possible result, which is not the same as simple faith.
Comey was appointed and served as Deputy Attorney General under Bush, and was involved with several domestic and international intelligence operations. He primarily came to public notice when he refused to certify a domestic wiretapping program while Acting AG because AG Ashcroft was in the ICU being treated for pancreatitis, and rushed to the hospital to intercept Alberto Gonzalez and Andrew Card before they could convince Ashcroft, who was under the effect of painkillers and sedatives, to sign off on it. On the other hand, Comey signed off on torture techniques as being legal.
I don't agree with some of the things Comey has done or backed, but I think he's a man of principles who believes strongly in the law. Had Trump fired him within the first few weeks of taking office, it would have been unusual but part of the changeover. Doing so nearly four months into his term and after the effusive praise heaped upon him for an obviously questionable reason just adds to suspicions over the real reasons.
You're asking questions that aren't meant to be covered by these numbers. That doesn't make them unimportant, but you need to look elsewhere for your answers. A discouraged worker is someone "not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify."
Imagine a coal miner (to use a common example these days) who tried eight months ago to get a job at a local mine when he heard that a few positions were open. He didn't get the job, and so he stays home, not bothering to look for an other job (for whatever reason--it doesn't matter here). He thinks that no jobs are open in his career/skill set (coal mining) and so doesn't bother looking, but has done so in the last 12 months. He's a discouraged worker. There's no judgment attached to it, and that's important because it removes subjectivity. Asking where they get their money from invites subjective judgments, and for the purposes of the survey, it's best left out.
Theoretically, even under-the-counter work is counted. The question asked is, "Did you do any work for pay?" not "Did you do any work for pay and get a proper paycheck with all appropriate deductions taken out?" One could do snow shoveling in winter in Chicago for 35 hours a week, collecting cash from neighbors, and be considered fully employed for the purposes of the CPS even though no taxes are being paid on that income.
Ultimately, you're trying to tag LFPR as this hugely meaningful number, but it has all kinds of problems. It doesn't discuss reasons why someone is working (breadwinner lost job, spouse or child has to work to make up the difference), why someone is not working (unemployed, retired, stay-at-home spouse/parent, student, independently wealthy, sugarbaby), whether they would work if they were offered a position. It's a useful number to understand one specific trend in the job market, but it lacks so much information as to be meaningless without additional contextual data.
Bad phrasing taken way out of context. I despise Nancy Pelosi and think she should have left office long ago, but she was talking about the legislative process. You can't know what's going to be in a bill until the amendments are voted on and the final bill is passed, at which point all the claims about it could be laid to rest one way or the other. The votes took place after dozens of hearings and included many Republican amendments that were accepted. Anyone following could know what went into it before the final votes were taken.
You're partially right (you can have been out of work for ten years but if you were actively looking, you're considered to be unemployed), but underemployment numbers have been declining, too. The U-6 number is down to 8.6%, the lowest it's been since November 2007. The lowest it's been on record (going back to 1994) is October 2000, when it reached 6.8%. The unemployment rate (U-3) was 3.9% at that time; most economists consider employment around the 4%-4.5% range to be full without overheating the economy, and the Fed had raised interest rates by about a percentage point since mid-1999.
Note: U-6 is defined as "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." Basically, everyone willing to work full time but not getting it. (Full time doesn't mean a single full-time job. If you work two part-time jobs that add up to 35 or more hours per week, you're considered a full-time worker.)
And if you see the labor force participation rate, try to determine what population that the figure is based on. And who gets counted as participating. (E.g., if an H1B worker is counted as participating, is he also counted as a part of the population used in calculating the rate.)
The LFPR is pretty clear on who is involved, though you need to understand a few definitions.
The LFPR is defined as "the labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population."
The civilian noninstitutional population is defined as "persons 16 years of age and older residing in the 50 states and the District of Columbia who do not live in institutions (for example, correctional facilities, long-term care hospitals, and nursing homes) and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces."
The labor force is defined as "all persons classified as employed or unemployed in accordance with the definitions contained in [the BLS glossary]."
Employed persons are defined as "persons 16 years and over in the civilian noninstitutional population who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family; and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs."
Unemployed persons are defined as "Persons aged 16 years and older who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed."
I snipped the definitions slightly for space, but they're all at this BLS link if you need more details.
So the H1B worker is counted as participating, as is the illegal immigrant construction worker. It's all persons, not all citizens or all permanent residents. If you're 93 and retired, but living on your own and not looking for and not wanting a job, you're part of the civilian noninstitutional population, so you factor into the LFPR, but not into the unemployment or underemployment rates. If you're 15 and working a part-time job, you're not counted in the LFPR or employment or unemployment status.
The LFPR, though, has a great deal of downward pressure on it from retiring Baby Boomers. That will level out eventually, and the LFPR may begin to climb as they die off, but the highest that it ever got was 67.3% in early 2000. Don't expect to see something above 70% unless there's a mass die-off of old people.
This is still mostly Obama economic territory, but that's shifting, and will be affected by the recent budget deal. By October, it will be pretty squarely in Trump's court, especially if a new budget can get passed before then. Presidents don't have a lot of ability to affect the economy upward, but they can do a lot to send it downward.
Mistake in phrasing on my part. My comment should have opened with "I would imagine that most places that take plastic only advertise it when you walk in."
But you're mistaken about any establishment being forced to take cash to settle a debt. From the US Treasury website:
There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.
Based on this, a merchant is free to require plastic only. Your offer to pay cash may be rebuffed, but your debt is still open unless and until you find a means to pay the merchant in the merchant's preferred fashion. Failure to do so opens you up to legal action.
Acronyms are abbreviations made of the initial letters of other words and pronounced as separate words themselves. Examples: NASA, FUBAR, SNAFU.
Initialisms are abbreviations made of the initial letters of other words but pronounced by speaking each letter in turn. Examples: UN, US, UK, NSA.
"SKU" is sometimes treated as either. It can be pronounced "S-K-U" or similar to the word "skew."
Anyway, whether you add an apostrophe before the 's' in a plural form depends on the style guide you choose to follow. Oxford says not to use it (except in the case of a single letter or digit), as does the Chicago Manual of Style. However, the NYTimes guide says it must be used.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also protected by copyright. It doesn't have the same protections as registered copyright, but it had copyright the moment it was created.
I agree with you somewhat, but the courts should be in the business of enforcing contracts, though--that's one of their most basic functions, and what most civil law is based on, whether that contract is express or implied. When a third party profits from the violation of an agreement between two parties, the courts have a role in determining if the violation was facilitated by the third party directly (extremely serious), indirectly (less serious), or not at all (still worrisome). Without enforcement against the third parties, the risk to employees wanting to take the result of hard work and serious investment and go to another company is almost nil. Sure, they might be sued for the value of the trade secret in terms of lost sales, but the other company could fully indemnify them for it.
Further, while trade secrets are commonly associated with big business (like recipes for Coca-Cola and KFC chicken), they also provide powerful protection for small companies that might otherwise be stolen out of existence by larger companies. A large competitor able to outspend a small one on grabbing trade secrets in deals with employees without repercussion from the courts could easily establish a monopoly. Given the rapid shifts from one administration to the next pertaining to antitrust law, waiting for the government to step in to break up the trust is a fool's errand. Hence, the value of trade secret protection built into the law.
Waymo isn't a patent troll, though, as they're not an NPE (non-practicing entity). They're doing active research, pushing the field, and have put cars on the road to various degrees. They're not ready to sell systems, but merely suing over an allegedly stolen patent doesn't make them a patent troll.
Tech workers, yes, but I meant the whole range of open jobs. Recruiters exist for more than just IT, and they're telling companies that they have to offer more than they're used to providing if they want people to move to fill the positions.
I'm not sure if the resume farms (many of which were actually located in Asia) have thinned out recently or they gave up trying to contact me. I still get the occasional ping from LinkedIn, but they tend to be in-house recruiters, with very few hits from even the larger recruiting firms. I still get calls every few months from resumes I last updated almost a decade ago.
I ran into a job description in 1999 that was looking for a Java developer with ten years of experience. I lost all confidence in hiring managers having a clue right then.
Recruiting farms that rely on resume spamming have annihilated the market by setting highly unrealistic expectations. There are a few good recruiters out there, and most of them are telling their clients that they need to boost their pay or reduce their requirements (or both). No one is going to move hundreds of miles on their own dime for a $30K job, but they might for $40K or $50K. Look at the cost of leaving the position open, including opportunity costs, morale issues, and turnover increases, and see if that isn't worth $20K.
The XB-70 also lost out to ICBMs. The whole point of the Valkyrie was to speed past Soviet air defenses (or possibly stay out of range--dropping from 70,000 feet at a decent speed gets you a good range even on a dumb bomb). If ICBMs hadn't worked out, the Valkyrie (or some variant of it) might have had a chance. As it was, the Defense Department largely ended development of large, high-speed aircraft.
There are a lot of things we can do with regular displays, and yet we choose to carry tablets and phones with us to handle them instead. It's lighter and more convenient to do so. The same thing will happen with this tech: it will become the lighter, more convenient way to do things, plus it will provide a free hand that's currently used to manipulate a device. There's also a difference between moving your head to look over at a monitor and glancing up with your eyes to see what's projected.
You're also missing out on the augmented reality possibilities. The surgeon could get an overlay of information from the latest MRI or CT scan; the factory worker could see how the parts should go together, perhaps getting an artificial coloring for the next part needed; the floor supervisor could get an overlay of component flows with immediate data of what the last parts were to move merely my looking in that direction.
Glass was an invention without a market, but that's not the same as a useless invention. The concept will become part of our everyday life.
Well, maybe not yours. But almost everyone else's.
No, you didn't fix it. You changed it to something completely different. It wasn't a matter of mismarketing, but of no one having an understanding of where it would have fit. It's not that these ideas weren't there, but that they couldn't be done at the time. The capabilities just didn't exist, and they only barely do now. Google just kind of threw it out into the world to see what people would come up with, but that turned out to be a very small list. It wasn't until they had the real-world failure that they pulled back into a targeted lab, looked at new hardware, and figured out some new ways to do things that it started to become marginally useful. That use will grow over time as others get into the arena (HoloLens could be a big player) and the tools become easier to use.
And that's your particular case, but not everyone's. Here are some things that could work:
- A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.
- A factory worker could have a list of steps to follow to complete an assembly
- A floor supervisor could monitor progress of the line before or after their location
- Even you could step back a safe distance, triggering a reappearance of the display that you can check, which then disappears when you approach the machine to ensure that you have no visual distractions.
All of this could also be recorded or streamed for training, troubleshooting, or performance checks.
Glass was just ahead of its time and suffered from being the first to market, as many such efforts do. The same privacy complaints occurred as soon as cameras began appearing in phones, and got louder as smartphones became more common. Underskirt photos led to attempts to require that all devices make a sound when a picture is taken, even when the device is silenced. Now, no one bats an eye at smartphones. I could record everything in front of me just by putting the phone in my chest pocket, and you'd never know, compared to Glass with its LED. With augmented reality becoming easier to process and the applications growing, it's only a matter of time before Glass, HoloLens, and a dozen other products that rely on cameras are ubiquitous. The first app with universal appeal will be a game, but GPS directions will follow soon, and then you'll be able to pop menus out of restaurants in your field of vision.
It's going to happen. It will probably be a few years yet, but it's going to be come the norm.
Repairmen also have very low volumes of payment.
Card-only places are uncommon even in big cities, but they're getting more common: food trucks, new restaurants, and a few shops here and there. It's a slow change, but it's happening anyway.
A tiny segment, though. Most people run plastic, whether credit or debit, and it's getting to the point now that pulling out cash is like it used to be when the person ahead of you pulled out a checkbook: people behind sigh, roll their eyes, and wonder when this person is going to get out of the stone ages.
While it's generally true that cash doesn't fail, I have been in a few places that declined cash and took plastic only, at least experimentally. It reduces security costs and reduces the opportunities for employees to steal.
He said the reason that he gave it up is that he's running two companies (and had a hand in a third when SolarCity was separate), and he didn't have the time to get involved in a another large-scale company. This isn't hard to believe given the rapid expansion of SpaceX and Tesla. Even Musk only has 24 hours in a day, and even he has to sleep sometimes (though finding out he's taking something like Armodafinil wouldn't surprise me). He's since started two smaller companies (the Boring Company and Neuralink) that have tight focuses and are, by most accounts, being largely handled by other people.
They mention that it's the equivalent pressure to 200,000 feet up, which is .022 kPa. Surface pressure is 101.33 kPa, about 4600 times greater.
It's not hard vacuum, but it's not far from it for practical purposes.
Title case in headlines isn't new. A check of the New York Times headlines from a random date (April 7, 1936) shows that they used title case back then.
Minimum wage still applies in restaurants, but it works differently. In a tipped position, the minimum wage is lower, but the final payout after tips must still match or exceed minimum wage overall. For non-tipped positions (cooks and other non-serving staff), they still have to meet the non-tipped minimum wage.
I think the point is that we may not have developed the technology. The first radio telescope wasn't developed until the 1930s, more than 300 years after the first recorded use of a telescope for astronomical purposes. The first gravitational telescope discovery came barely more than a year ago.
I'm not holding my breath for the imminent discovery of intelligent alien life, but I also realize that how we see the universe will change over the next four hundred years probably at least as much as it's changed over the last four hundred years. Maybe in that time, we'll discover a signal, or someone else will discover ours. That's being open to the discovery of an alternate method of observation with one possible result, which is not the same as simple faith.
Comey was appointed and served as Deputy Attorney General under Bush, and was involved with several domestic and international intelligence operations. He primarily came to public notice when he refused to certify a domestic wiretapping program while Acting AG because AG Ashcroft was in the ICU being treated for pancreatitis, and rushed to the hospital to intercept Alberto Gonzalez and Andrew Card before they could convince Ashcroft, who was under the effect of painkillers and sedatives, to sign off on it. On the other hand, Comey signed off on torture techniques as being legal.
I don't agree with some of the things Comey has done or backed, but I think he's a man of principles who believes strongly in the law. Had Trump fired him within the first few weeks of taking office, it would have been unusual but part of the changeover. Doing so nearly four months into his term and after the effusive praise heaped upon him for an obviously questionable reason just adds to suspicions over the real reasons.
You're asking questions that aren't meant to be covered by these numbers. That doesn't make them unimportant, but you need to look elsewhere for your answers. A discouraged worker is someone "not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify."
Imagine a coal miner (to use a common example these days) who tried eight months ago to get a job at a local mine when he heard that a few positions were open. He didn't get the job, and so he stays home, not bothering to look for an other job (for whatever reason--it doesn't matter here). He thinks that no jobs are open in his career/skill set (coal mining) and so doesn't bother looking, but has done so in the last 12 months. He's a discouraged worker. There's no judgment attached to it, and that's important because it removes subjectivity. Asking where they get their money from invites subjective judgments, and for the purposes of the survey, it's best left out.
Theoretically, even under-the-counter work is counted. The question asked is, "Did you do any work for pay?" not "Did you do any work for pay and get a proper paycheck with all appropriate deductions taken out?" One could do snow shoveling in winter in Chicago for 35 hours a week, collecting cash from neighbors, and be considered fully employed for the purposes of the CPS even though no taxes are being paid on that income.
Ultimately, you're trying to tag LFPR as this hugely meaningful number, but it has all kinds of problems. It doesn't discuss reasons why someone is working (breadwinner lost job, spouse or child has to work to make up the difference), why someone is not working (unemployed, retired, stay-at-home spouse/parent, student, independently wealthy, sugarbaby), whether they would work if they were offered a position. It's a useful number to understand one specific trend in the job market, but it lacks so much information as to be meaningless without additional contextual data.
Bad phrasing taken way out of context. I despise Nancy Pelosi and think she should have left office long ago, but she was talking about the legislative process. You can't know what's going to be in a bill until the amendments are voted on and the final bill is passed, at which point all the claims about it could be laid to rest one way or the other. The votes took place after dozens of hearings and included many Republican amendments that were accepted. Anyone following could know what went into it before the final votes were taken.
You're partially right (you can have been out of work for ten years but if you were actively looking, you're considered to be unemployed), but underemployment numbers have been declining, too. The U-6 number is down to 8.6%, the lowest it's been since November 2007. The lowest it's been on record (going back to 1994) is October 2000, when it reached 6.8%. The unemployment rate (U-3) was 3.9% at that time; most economists consider employment around the 4%-4.5% range to be full without overheating the economy, and the Fed had raised interest rates by about a percentage point since mid-1999.
Note: U-6 is defined as "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." Basically, everyone willing to work full time but not getting it. (Full time doesn't mean a single full-time job. If you work two part-time jobs that add up to 35 or more hours per week, you're considered a full-time worker.)
The LFPR is pretty clear on who is involved, though you need to understand a few definitions.
I snipped the definitions slightly for space, but they're all at this BLS link if you need more details.
So the H1B worker is counted as participating, as is the illegal immigrant construction worker. It's all persons, not all citizens or all permanent residents. If you're 93 and retired, but living on your own and not looking for and not wanting a job, you're part of the civilian noninstitutional population, so you factor into the LFPR, but not into the unemployment or underemployment rates. If you're 15 and working a part-time job, you're not counted in the LFPR or employment or unemployment status.
The LFPR, though, has a great deal of downward pressure on it from retiring Baby Boomers. That will level out eventually, and the LFPR may begin to climb as they die off, but the highest that it ever got was 67.3% in early 2000. Don't expect to see something above 70% unless there's a mass die-off of old people.
This is still mostly Obama economic territory, but that's shifting, and will be affected by the recent budget deal. By October, it will be pretty squarely in Trump's court, especially if a new budget can get passed before then. Presidents don't have a lot of ability to affect the economy upward, but they can do a lot to send it downward.
Mistake in phrasing on my part. My comment should have opened with "I would imagine that most places that take plastic only advertise it when you walk in."
But you're mistaken about any establishment being forced to take cash to settle a debt. From the US Treasury website:
Based on this, a merchant is free to require plastic only. Your offer to pay cash may be rebuffed, but your debt is still open unless and until you find a means to pay the merchant in the merchant's preferred fashion. Failure to do so opens you up to legal action.
Acronyms are abbreviations made of the initial letters of other words and pronounced as separate words themselves. Examples: NASA, FUBAR, SNAFU.
Initialisms are abbreviations made of the initial letters of other words but pronounced by speaking each letter in turn. Examples: UN, US, UK, NSA.
"SKU" is sometimes treated as either. It can be pronounced "S-K-U" or similar to the word "skew."
Anyway, whether you add an apostrophe before the 's' in a plural form depends on the style guide you choose to follow. Oxford says not to use it (except in the case of a single letter or digit), as does the Chicago Manual of Style. However, the NYTimes guide says it must be used.