Looking Beyond the Job-Finding Rate: The Difficulty of Finding Full-Time Work →

Before the recession, the number of unemployed workers who said they had been looking for a job for more than half a year accounted for about 18 percent of unemployed workers. Currently, that share is close to 36 percent.

Yikes! Though overall statistics don't seem *quite* as bad:

Since the end of the recession, the number of unemployed has declined, thanks in part to a gradually improving rate of job finding. But the job-finding rate is still relatively low, and the ability of an unemployed job seeker who wants to work full-time to actually find full-time work remains a significant challenge.

Explaining Ukraine is a pain; it stays mainly just the same →

According to Drezner, it's possible these haven't changed in 20 years:

  1. As bad as things were in Russia, it seemed an oasis of stability compared to Ukraine.
  2. Regardless of whether a pro-Western or pro-Russian government was in power, the Ukrainian government was riddled with corruption.
  3. It’s the most energy-inefficient economy in Europe.

Noncompete Clauses Increasingly Pop Up in Array of Jobs →

Noncompete clauses are now appearing in far-ranging fields beyond the worlds of technology, sales and corporations with tightly held secrets, where the curbs have traditionally been used. From event planners to chefs to investment fund managers to yoga instructors, employees are increasingly required to sign agreements that prohibit them from working for a company’s rivals.

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“Noncompetes are a dampener on innovation and economic development,” said Paul Maeder, co-founder and general partner of Highland Capital Partners, a venture capital firm with offices in both Boston and Silicon Valley. “They result in a lot of stillbirths of entrepreneurship — someone who wants to start a company, but can’t because of a noncompete.”

Backers of noncompetes counter that they help spur the state’s economy and competitiveness by encouraging companies to invest heavily in their workers. Noncompetes are also needed, supporters say, to prevent workers from walking off with valuable code, customer lists, trade secrets or expensive training.

Egypt bans unlicensed preachers, tightens grip on mosques →

The decree issued by interim President Adly Mansour's office also threatened fines and jail for freelance imams, especially if they wore clerical garments associated with the respected Al-Azhar center of Sunni learning in Cairo.

Selected employees of the religious endowments ministry will be empowered by the justice ministry to arrest anyone caught violating the decree, it added.

Are banks too large? →

Large banks have grown significantly in size and become more involved in market-based activities since the late 1990s. Figure 1 shows how the balance-sheet size of the world’s largest banks increased two- to four-fold in the ten years prior to the crisis. Figure 2 illustrates how banks shifted from traditional lending towards market-oriented activities.

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Also, large banks appear to have a distinct, seemingly risky business model. They tend to simultaneously have lower capital (Figure 3), less stable funding (Figure 4), more market-based activities (Figure 5), and be more organisationally complex (Figure 6), than smaller banks.