Labor Day, a federal holiday since 1894, “is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor. It’s always celebrated on the first Monday of September, unofficially marking the end of the summer with a most-welcome three-day weekend for (most) workers. We thought it would be the perfect time to gather some research to sum up how American workers are faring. Here’s a statistical portrait of the American workforce.

Here's a sobering fact: American entrepreneurship is in decline for the first time since the U.S. government started measuring it.

And U.S. Census Bureau data show the U.S. ranks “12th among developed nations in terms of business startup activity,” according to Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup.

Believe it or not, when measured in per-capita terms, socialist countries such as Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Sweden now have more startups than we do.

Last week, our article addressed the state of entrepreneurship education in the country where it was observed that a lot of gaps still needed to be filled in order for us as a country to fully engage in entrepreneurship education.

 However, it is very important for us, as a nation, to fully understand why entrepreneurship education is important before we can make strides to improve our education system.

Successful entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Chris McCormick of L.L.Bean have long realized that networking is no longer something that you do to get what you want, but requires listening and relationship building to do what the other party wants, with a win-win outcome. We now live in a world where even subtle persuasion efforts are suspect, so it’s a bad idea to go into a networking situation thinking you’re going to talk somebody into doing your bidding.

“By and large, visual art has always been defined as static,” the abstract artist Frank Stella observed to me in 1998, “but the tradition has always been to use illusion to create a sense of motion.” He was quite correct, historically speaking. From the days of the cave artists of the Cro-Magnon era, tens of thousands of years ago, artists have attempted to make images of a world that is constantly rushing, drifting, rippling, and shifting. Or as Stella put it: “If something moves, that’s how you can tell it’s alive.”

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

Global attention has focused on the plunge in the Shanghai stock market and mounting evidence that China’s economic growth is slowing dramatically. Moreover, the contagion appears to be spreading, characterized by extreme volatility and alarming declines in America’s own equity markets. Those worries are compounded because there always have been doubts about the accuracy of Beijing’s official economic statistics.  Even before the current downturn, some outside experts believed that Chinese officials padded the results, making the country’s performance appear stronger than it actually was. If China is now teetering on the brink of recession, the political incentives for officials to conceal the extent of the damage would be quite powerful.

Add “boredom detector” to the seemingly endless list of things your smartphone can do. A group of researchers say they’ve developed an algorithm that can suss this out by looking at your mobile activity, considering factors like the time since you last had a call or text, the time of day, and how intensely you’re using the phone.

Most of the technologists I know inherently believe that the terms inventor and entrepreneur mean the same thing, so they are frustrated and surprised when they build their products and no business evolves. They don’t understand that most great entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, had a partner with complementary skills on the business or technical side.

The European Union's financial services commissioner on Saturday urged the need to wean firms off being too reliant on traditional bank money, saying crowdfunding and venture capital are two "interesting" sources of funding.

Jonathan Hill, EU commissioner for financial services and capital markets, told CNBC that small-and-medium-sized businesses in the 28-nation bloc are too dependent on traditional bank financing which can hurt the economy if things turn sour in the banking sector.

Backers of startups worldwide are looking for the next “disruptive trend” that can overturn industries. Ironically, the venture capital industry has begun to resemble markets that investors themselves are looking to disrupt.

It is with this sentence that Michael Porter started his 1979 seminal article ‘How competitive forces shape strategy’, which ended up defining strategy for a whole generation of business leaders. While the popularity of Porter’s ‘competitive forces’ amongst strategists remains unrivaled, business leaders commonly complain that strategies aren’t properly executed and that the vast majority of innovations fail. What is persistently wrong with innovation strategy?

For many living in the United States, Labor Day is the ultimate long weekend—it’s the end of summer, the beginning of fall, the last day to wear white for some. Established nationwide in 1894, Labor Day is actually a dedication to the achievements of American workers and the contributions they have made to the prosperity of the country.

Image: http://blog.indeed.com 

The technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) practice at Deloitte today announces its predictions for the technology sector in 2015.

Deloitte predicts 2015 will see click and collect locations increase to over half a million sites across Europe, a 20 per cent increase on last year. Ecommerce’s popularity is still increasing across Europe, with customers wanting easy access to their goods, and not having to wait for a delivery.

Crowdfunding is still in its heady early days. A lot of people think of it as a quirky way to fund weird hobbies, pipedream proposals, parodies or bacon fantasies.

Crystal bacon, the world’s largest jockstrap, a Chipotle burrito for lunch later today and a bacon-wrapped alligator stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken are some of the weirdest things people have tried to get crowdfunded.

Is The Venture Capital Industry In Silicon Valley Efficient? originally appeared on Quora: The best answer to any question.

Answer by Jeff Meyerson, Host of Software Engineering Daily, on Quora

Inefficiency comes from the fact that founders are pressured to structure their business in a way that requires debt.

Venture capital firms are very efficient from the standpoint of partners and LPs but less efficient in terms of assisting founders, and providing net macroeconomic impact.

The startup world is often discussed a place of intense competition and ruthlessness. You have to grind it out as an entrepreneur, you have to move faster and harder than your rivals.

But there’s another quality that is self-evidently more important: loyalty.

Capital, entrepreneurship, land and labour. CELL as it is famously known in Economics is the building block to any successful economy. The quantity and quality of these four factors of production can define the rate at which an economy grows, as well as its ability to sustain for future generations. Though some may argue that all four components of CELL have equal importance, the author firmly believe that entrepreneurship is what will steer the economy in the future.

The good news: as for 2013, global life expectancy for people in 188 countries has risen 6.2 years since 1990 (65.3 to 71.5). The bad news: healthy life expectancy (HALE) at birth rose by only 5.4 years (56.9 to 62.3), due to fatal and nonfatal ailments (interactive visualization by country here).

In other words, people are living more years with illness and disability. Ischemic heart disease, lower respiratory infections, and stroke cause the most health loss around the world.

Image: http://www.kurzweilai.net 

There are so many start up success stories, but behind each startup are dozens of smart tools that can help all of us succeed. We’ve gathered some of the best tools to help budding (or established) entrepreneurs become more productive and help boost their success.

Scan the unavoidable lists of things successful entrepreneurs have in common and you’ll soon see the importance of books. Pretty much every entrepreneur who has ever reached an enviable level of success will cite reading as an essential daily habit.