Businesses hire up to deal with more regs

A growing thicket of federal regulations under the Obama administration has contributed to an employment spike in at least one corner of the job market: the increasingly vital compliance industry.
 
ObamaCare, the Dodd-Frank Act and other large federal undertakings have led to an outpouring of new agency rules derided by business groups and defended by advocates.
 
But the regulations have also been a boon for professional compliance officers paid to help companies understand and adapt to the new requirements.  

“Staff to track compliance issues is on the rise, and it has been for the last several years,” said Richard Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the American Bankers Association. “And, at the moment, there’s no prospect it will decrease anytime soon.”
 
Data kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows an 18-percent increase in the number of compliance officers in the United States between 2009 and 2012, according to an analysis conducted by the conservative American Action Forum (AAF).
 
At last count, there were an estimated 227,500 compliance officers employed in the United States, according to the BLS. The bureau defines a compliance officer as an employee responsible for evaluating conformity with laws and regulations.
 
The agency estimates do not include professions like bank examiners, tax collectors, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors that are tasked to monitor companies for fraud and safety violations. 

Compliance officers make an average of just under $65,000 annually, a gross national labor cost of roughly $14.7 billion, according to the BLS data. 

Via: The Hill

Continue Reading.....

‘Democratic’ and ‘Anti-Business’ Are Becoming Synonymous

Forbes’s recently released list of “The Best States for Businesses and Careers” provides further evidence of the Democratic party’s striking erosion as a party of economic growth and prosperity.  Based on their votes in the most recent presidential election, all but three of Forbes’s top-10 states are Republican-leaning, while all but two of its bottom-10 states are Democratic-leaning. 

The top-10 states on Forbes’s list — Utah, Virginia, North Dakota, North Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Iowa — voted for Mitt Romney by an average margin of 14 percentage points.  Meanwhile, the bottom-10 states on Forbes’s list — California, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Maine — voted for President Obama by an average margin of 13 points.  That’s a 27-point swing from Romney to Obama as we move from the top-10 states to the bottom-10 states.

Forbes rated the states based on six factors: “business costs,” “labor supply,” “regulatory environment,” “economic climate,” “growth prospects,” and “quality of life.”  Forbes rated 62 percent of Obama’s states as being below average and 63 percent of Romney’s states as being above average.  Obama won only 33 percent of Forbes’s top-15 states but 73 percent of its bottom-15 states.

Via: Weekly Standard

Continue Reading...