Funding boost: For the 12th consecutive year, the Louisiana Business & Technology Center, located at LSU Innovation Park, has won the FAST award from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The LBTC is the only entity in the nation to have received the award every year it’s been offered through the Federal and State Technology Partnership program. The award aims to improve outcomes for underrepresented entrepreneurs by providing a grant of up to $125,000 per year. Read the full LSU announcement.
Hiring: U.S. businesses added a healthy 195,000 jobs last month, payroll processor ADP said this morning. Hiring occurred broadly among small, medium-sized and large businesses, compared with recent months when large firms had dominated. Health care, restaurants and hotels, and professional services all added jobs at a robust pace. Manufacturing added 8,000 workers, despite other data that shows factory output is contracting. Read the full report.
Output: The Labor Department announced this morning that overall productivity—output per hour worked—rose at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 2.3% in the April-June period after rising 3.5% from January through March. The second-quarter figure was unchanged from an initial estimate last month. However, manufacturing productivity fell 2.2% in the second quarter, the worst performance since a 4% drop in the third quarter of 2017. Read the full report.
