WASHINGTON — A surprisingly positive jobs report for April showed that employers added 165,000 positions and the unemployment rate fell to a four-year low of 7.5 percent, sparking a day of milestones on Wall Street as investors looked past doubts about robust hiring in the months ahead.
The report released May 3 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics sent stocks soaring at the open, partly because it exceeded low expectations but also because it included sharp upward revisions to February and March job estimates, adding a combined 114,000 jobs to those earlier tallies.
Rising stock prices and gains in home prices have some Americans feeling more comfortable about their financial status for the first time in years. Good news begets good news, and Wall Street hopes it will draw more investors back into stocks. read more »
Kitsap County’s housing market gained more new listings in April than the same month in 2012, although the total number of active listings and the median home price were still below figures from a year earlier, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service statistics.
The Northwest MLS reported 543 new Kitsap listings in April, bringing the total to 1,287 active listings at the end of last month, compared with 1,395 for April 2012.
The median price for year-to-date listings in 2013 is $259,950, compared with $266,900 for listings in the first four months of last year.
Ozone International marked its 10-year anniversary with recognition by Seattle Business magazine as 2013 Manufacturer of the Year in the Small Firms category.
The Bainbridge Island-based company founded in 2003 by Jim and Jon Brandt makes sanitizing and cleaning systems for the food processing industry.
As the magazine’s summary of the company notes read more »
There will be a community screening of the documentary film “Shift Change” (www.shiftchange.org) on May 9 at 7 p.m. at the Bainbridge Public Library. The filmmakers, Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young, will be present for the screening and will lead a Q&A session after the film.
At a time when many are disillusioned with the current economic system of big banks, big business, and growing inequality in the United States, employee ownership offers an alternative for workers and for communities, large and small. “Shift Change” highlights vibrant worker-owned companies in Mondragon — a long-established network of co-ops in the Basque region of Spain — and across the U.S., where worker co-cops are on the rise. Through in-depth interviews with worker-owners, attendance at co-op meetings, and visits to the factory floor, the film conveys the promise these businesses offer to reinvent our failing economy, provide a pathway to long-term stability, and nurture a more egalitarian way of life. read more »
WestSound Home & Garden magazine has launched its new website, featuring content from the current issue of the quarterly publication. The current issue features the 2013 Best of West Sound Readers’ Choice Awards.
Read about elegant and interesting homes, creative gardeners, the latest in products for the home, restaurants and artists. It’s all local and about the West Sound area, where we live, from Bainbridge Island to Gig Harbor. Please go to www.wshg.net for more information or to subscribe to the magazine.
Beginning May 10, the Kitsap County Department of Community Development will be open to the public for limited services on Fridays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Services available include building permit submittal and issuance, Planner-of-the-Day (general inquiries), and building review questions and inspection coordination.
The department is open for all normal services from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
From May 7-9, starting at 7 p.m. each night and continuing until 6 a.m. the next day, crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation will close two westbound State Route 16 lanes across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The two remaining westbound lanes will stay open through each night.
During the lane closures, crews will continue work to remove original steel rivets from the bridge’s westernmost expansion joint in preparation for replacing it.
Replacement of the expansion joint will occur over an extended weekend, the date for which will be announced when plans are finalized. Doing preparatory work before the extended weekend will allow the contractor to work more efficiently within that limited timeframe. read more »
The Gig Harbor Downtown Waterfront Alliance (formerly the Gig Harbor Historic Waterfront Association) has been designated as an accredited National Main Street Program for meeting the commercial district revitalization performance standards set by the National Main Street Center, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Each year, the National Main Street Center and its partners announce the list of accredited Main Street programs that have built strong revitalization organizations and demonstrate their ability in using the Main Street Four Point Approach methodology for strengthening their local economy and protecting their historic buildings. read more »
Even some of its strongest supporters now say that the federal Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, is going to be a train wreck. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, cost estimates for Obamacare’s new entitlements — the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies — have doubled since it was signed into law in 2010.
The CBO originally estimated the cost at $898 billion from 2010 to 2019, but this estimate included only six years of spending, since most of the provisions didn’t take effect until 2014. read more »
