Friday's employment numbers showed a reasonable gain of 165,000 jobs added to the payroll in April. These are preliminary numbers, as today’s report also shows that the numbers for February and March have now been adjusted upward. So, there is some hope that things may be better than they appear. A separate survey also was released today, based on a survey of households, from which we learned that the overall unemployment rate edged slightly down to 7.5%.

The nation’s economy added 165,000 new jobs in April while the jobless rate dropped to 7.5% from March's 7.6%, according to  figures released this morning  by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The Washington Post today published a special section —in print and on the Web—about what some say is a resurgence of “Made in America” manufacturing.

In the section’s anchor piece , Brad Plumer writes that some U.S. firms have “reshored” their manufacturing operations in the United States and that even some Chinese companies have located new plants here. He cites a narrowing wage gap between U.S. workers and their foreign counterparts, lower energy and transportation costs and automation as key drivers in moving manufacturing to the United States.

A  new report  from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows the country needs to increase union membership significantly, create universal health care, a universal retirement system (beyond Social Security), expand college attainment and achieve gender pay equity to create more "good" jobs in the United States. 

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. Most had forecast growth of at least 3 percent (on an annualized basis) in the first quarter. But we learned this morning (in the Commerce Department’s report) it grew only 2.5 percent.

While most attention in the Boston tragedy is rightfully focused on the victims of last Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon, the damage done by the terrorist attacks didn't end with the explosions or the subsequent shootout that led to additional deaths. Much of the city shut down during the manhunt for the terror suspects; and while most salaried employees could take the day off without losing pay, low-wage workers did not have that luxury. Other workers were forced to work long hours or brave dangerous conditions to get their jobs done.

Economist Robert Kuttner visited AFL-CIO's book club earlier this week to discuss his forthcoming book,  Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.  In the book, Kuttner argues that policymakers are focused on the wrong kind of debt in making laws and attempting to fix the economy. Rather than a heavy emphasis on reducing the public debt, which leads to misguided policies of austerity, Kuttner says, reducing personal debt would go much further toward improving the economy and spurring job growth.

Are we spending too much on seniors and too little on kids? Many will recognize this as a classic either-or fallacy (what about tax breaks for the wealthy…?) But with Ronald Brownstein , Ezra Klein  and Charlie Cook all repeating the Urban Institute statistic that federal spending on seniors is nearly seven times that on children, the idea that seniors are crowding out children’s programs is catching on in Washington. Meanwhile, Urban Institute’s estimate that state and local governments spend nine times more on kids than on seniors hasn’t gotten the same attention. Overall, it appears that government spending on seniors is roughly double (or less) that on children, though this measure includes Social Security, which is almost entirely funded through worker contributions.

In real sciences, when a researcher claims to have made a major discovery, the researcher has to make the data he or she used public and other scientists immediately test it to see if it can be replicated. The results aren't accepted as valid, let alone acted on or relied on, in fields where people could get hurt—like medicine or engineering—until they are tested. And if you withhold the data from your colleagues, you are not a scientist, you are a quack. And then there is economics.

On Monday, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told a packed crowd at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., that the United States is paying a high price for the growing inequality facing the country. But, despite the long-thought idea that we have to choose between growth and equality, he said that the two are complements and that we can have both a strong, growing economy and equality.