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I own a startup staffing service here in the St. Louis metro area. Wednesday a kid came in to apply for assignment with us, and he brings a woman with him. It turns out she is his "work coach". What this means is that every time he goes looking for a job, she's with him, injecting herself into the proceedings, talking about him like he isn't there, using terms like "high-functioning" as if the guy were retarded. The poor bastard would do much better on his own. Has anybody else encountered anything like this?

Under pressure from the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in two decades, employers across the country are fighting back in state legislatures, the federal courts and city halls. Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers. Though the pushback is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, in many places it is reopening the rift over immigration that troubled the Republican Party last year. Businesses, generally Republican stalwarts,...

Clashes are increasing between Somali Muslims and Minnesota employers. Can the loose-fitting garb be a safety hazard? Is there a difference between a bathroom break and a prayer break? Fatuma Hassan has just enough rice in her near-empty cupboards to make it through the month. The anger she felt when she lost her job in May has given way to a dull, nagging hunger. Yet this soft-spoken 22-year-old became an unlikely hero within the Somali community when she and five of her Muslim co-workers were dismissed last month from the Mission Foods tortilla factory in New Brighton for refusing to...

The rising cost of shipping everything from industrial-pump parts to lawn-mower batteries to living-room sofas is forcing some manufacturers to bring production back to North America and freeze plans to send even more work overseas. "My cost of getting a shipping container here from China just keeps going up -- and I don't see any end in sight," says Claude Hayes, president of the retail heating division at DESA LLC. He says that cost has jumped about 15%, to about $5,300, since January and is set to increase again next month to $5,600. HOMEWARD BOUND • The News: Soaring fuel...

Well friends I have finally decided to leave China. I am living at home in Kansas City with my wife and baby. If any of you freepers out there are in need of a good, honest, conservative employee then I am in the job market. I have the following skills. Education Administration Management Web publishing International consulting Office and Clerical. 80 wpm Very good computer skills Very good people skills 3 Years in the Marines 3 Years in the Army B.A. in History with a Theater Minor. Thanks guys.

U.S. stock futures are pulling off their lows as an employment reading shows that the private sector added jobs last month. The ADP National Employment Report arriving Wednesday shows that the private sector added 40,000 jobs in May, rather than declined by 60,000 as economists had been expecting, according to Dow Jones Newswires. Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 20, or 0.16 percent, at 12,384, off their earlier lows.

"It's the economy, stupid," James Carville famously said during the 1992 campaign, when a young Bill Clinton was running against the other President Bush. The same could be said during this presidential campaign. The headlines are full of economic bad news -- mortgage foreclosures, the collapse of an investment bank, higher gas and food prices and lower home prices. Voters routinely list the economy as their chief concern, and consumer confidence has sunk to low levels. Yet at the same time, the economic numbers are not so bad. A recession is defined as two quarters of contraction. But we haven't...

A group of Muslim workers allege they were fired by a New Brighton tortilla factory for refusing to wear uniforms that they say were immodest by Islamic standards. Six Somali women claim they were ordered by a manager to wear pants and shirts to work instead of their traditional Islamic clothing of loose-fitting skirts and scarves, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that is representing the women.

Virginia’s unemployment rate fell 0.6 percentage point, from 3.9 percent in March to 3.3 percent in April. Employment increased mostly because of the increase in tourism jobs, construction work and the end of the strike...

It started with the tainted pet food. Then came the mass recalls of well-known toys.......

US slump to prop up India as next offshoring hotspot 14 May, 2008, 0750 hrs IST,Chiranjoy Sen, TNN BANGALORE: Belt-tightening by global technology giants—a fallout of US economic slowdown—is likely to reinforce India as the most preferred offshoring destination. Top technology firms are actively moving part of their workforce from the US, UK and European markets to lower-cost destinations. They cite availability of local talent, better delivery and conducive enviroment as key offshoring reasons. While they may not admit it, firms would be looking at stepping the gas on offshoring to curb bloating costs and to lift margins. Networking and...

As many of you know my wife just immigrated to the U.S. She is living in the Denver area and needs some help finding a job and social services. My mom is helping her but she is starting to get older and this is all new to her. So if any of you freepers live in the Denver area and can give her a hand let me know. I will be forever in your debt.

They eat from the same dishes and sleep in the same beds, but they seem to be operating in two different economies. From last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, according to the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). At the same time, American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs. You might even say American men are in recession, and American women are not. What's going on? Simply put, men have the misfortune of being concentrated in the two sectors that are doing the worst: manufacturing and construction. Women are...

The Monster Employment Index added seven points in April, as online job availability in the U.S. continued to rise moderately for the third consecutive.

LORETITO, Mexico — It's the end of the day here. Down one lonely street two young boys kick a ball between them, as an elderly woman slowly makes her way nearby. On most days, this little town about 300 miles northwest of Mexico City feels like the set of a Hollywood movie — its narrow streets and alleyways silent, stark, deserted. From the sidewalk outside his small liquor shop, Edmundo Cruz takes in the vast emptiness, pointing out one house after another left vacant when families headed north — to Seattle. It is said more Loretito people now live in...

Congress reached an agreement clearing the way for a bill to prohibit discrimination by employers and health insurers on the basis of genetic tests. Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who had been almost single-handedly holding up action on the bill, said in an interview Tuesday that most of his concerns had been resolved and predicted that the bill would pass soon. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who is chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said a bipartisan agreement had been reached to move the bill to the Senate floor. Proponents say the new law, more than a dozen years in...

US employers cut payrolls by a bigger-than-expected 80,000 in March, adding more evidence that a housing downturn and credit crisis have pushed the economy into a recession. It was the third monthly decline in a row and the biggest in five years, according to the Labor Department. Adding to the bleak picture, the department revised the first two months of the year's job losses to a total of 152,000 from a previous estimate of 85,000. The March unemployment rate jumped to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, the highest since a matching rate in September 2005. The March job report was...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mobile phone maker Motorola Inc (MOT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday it will take a $104 million pre-tax charge in the first quarter related to severance charges for 2,600 employees. The company said the charge included $113 million in severance costs, offset by $9 million in reversals of accruals from previous periods. Motorola has been trying to revive its business after losing market share to rivals such as Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research) and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research). It said all of its business segments will be affected by these...

Though the economy looks pretty fragile, job prospects for college graduates are quite strong, two UW-Madison career directors say. "There definitely are good prospects. We were surprised at the extent companies are still hiring," said Steve Schroeder, director of the undergraduate career center at the University of Wisconsin's School of Business. "Part of it is that the baby boomers are starting to retire. For the next 15 or 20 years, there will be more people retiring than graduates entering the market."Even companies that are struggling continue to hire, Schroeder noted. "Some senior employees are given buyout options where they can...

Unions Blast Government Effort to Stop Hiring of Illegal Aliens By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor March 27, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The Department of Homeland Security has re-issued a rule that labor unions and some business groups oppose. The "no-match" rule is intended to stop employers from hiring illegal aliens, but critics say it will have unintended consequences. The rule re-issued last week is the same one blocked by a federal district court in San Francisco last October. The Homeland Security Department (DHS) said the newly issued "supplemental" rule addresses all three concerns raised by the court on Oct. 10,...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India. "We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company's headquarters is located.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Homeland Security Department is appealing a judge's ruling against its proposal to force employers to fire workers whose names don't match their Social Security numbers, and promises to try to make the policy a law. A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the "no-match rule" in October, saying it would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs to comply with the regulation that the government hasn't evaluated, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in time would lose their jobs, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote. In...

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business. Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known. It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze...

...That's the word from Gov. Tim Pawlenty and companies across the state who met late last week at a series of roundtables to brainstorm about how to attract and prepare reluctant young workers to what in many cases remains a high-paying field. The governor, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) and MnSCU hosted roundtables in Rochester, Brainerd and South St. Paul to discuss potential solutions to the widespread problem. ...According to DEED, manufacturing accounts for 11 percent of all job vacancies in the state, second only to health care. There were 6,527 manufacturing jobs open...

I have been approached by my company to be relocated. In the company, it is considered detrimental for your career to turn down a job transfer. The relocation is to an expensive place and a "blue state". The cost of housing is expensive. I am looking at relocation money. One of the conditions to receive relocation is I have to sell my current house. With a bad real estate market, not a good time to sell. Other parts of the relocation is they give money to move my personal items but it is not enough for packers to do it....

Robert Beasley says he is “training young adults to be professional” — and he approaches his job with all the enthusiasm of an evangelist. Beasley, 48, is a career specialist with Arbor Education and Training located at the Greenwood WIN Job Center. The program teaches young adults how to act during an interview, complete a job application, assemble a resume and cover letter and perform other related tasks. “Basically, we’re giving them the skills to find a job, to get a job and to keep that job,” said Beasley, a Greenwood native and Jackson State University graduate. Arbor Education and...

After watching the Obama-Clinton debate ... I came away convinced that both candidates ...want to run this country like Argentina... In that country, Juan Peron-inspired labor syndicates ...dominate the economy... have ensured Argentina's isolation from international commerce and investment, and a slow but steady decline in living standards... If an American lost a job in the past decade, the charge goes, it's because in Mexico business has no labor obligations. This claim is not only untrue, it is the opposite of reality. Mexico is home to militant, high-powered unions and the most burdensome labor regulation in North America... Nafta has...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25, 2008 – Veterans looking for a job in the Cincinnati area should have an easier time, thanks to a new partnership. The Thank You Foundation has partnered with Careers in Focus to offer resume services, job coaching and job leads to veterans, the foundation’s president said today. “We hear plenty of stories about (post-traumatic stress disorder) and the suicide rate among veterans,” John Guinn said. “At the same time, many of these men and women are able to think on their feet, cope under pressure, and many possess technical skills valuable to most any employer. “If...

As we each search for our personal pot of gold, many of us wonder whether the rainbow leading us to a six-figure paycheck has to be so long. We want financially rewarding jobs, but not everyone is eager to commit the time and money necessary to complete a medical or law degree. The good news is that, even though statistics have shown that more education translates to higher earnings, there are still plenty of six-figure salary jobs for those of us who have decided not to take the seven-years-and-a-stethoscope route. The following is a list of seven lucrative fields in...

January 2008 Index Highlights: • Index falls nine points, indicating further moderation in U.S. online recruitment activity

GABRIELS, N.Y. — After 17 years of marriage, Joy and Richard Gonyea managed to save enough to trade their trailer in November for a cozy prefabricated home with a room for each of their two children and a pool in the backyard. The home overlooks the pine trees on the edge of their two-acre property in rural Vermontville, eight miles from the secluded state prison where Mrs. Gonyea works. “This home is all we’ve ever dreamed of,” said Mrs. Gonyea, 43, a registered nurse who runs the medical department at the prison, Camp Gabriels, a minimum-security facility in this minuscule...

Why do presidential candidates touting their concern for the economy pose with factory workers rather than with ballet troupes? After all, the U.S. now has more choreographers (16,340) than metal-casters (14,880), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More people make their livings shuffling and dealing cards in casinos (82,960) than running lathes (65,840), and there are almost three times as many security guards (1,004,130) as machinists (385,690). Whereas 30 percent of Americans worked in manufacturing in 1950, fewer than 15 percent do now. The economy as politicians present it is a folkloric thing. [In Minnesota it is 12%] ...This...

An unusually large share of workers have been out a job for more than six months even as overall unemployment has remained low, a little-noted weakness in the labor market that analysts said threatens to intensify the impact of the unfolding economic downturn. In November, nearly 1.4 million people -- almost one in five of those unemployed -- had been jobless for at least 27 weeks, the juncture when unemployment insurance benefits end for most recipients. That is about twice the level of long-term unemployment before the 2001 recession. The problem is ensnaring a broader swath of workers than before....

Mitt Romney: Flip, Flop, or Slip on ENDA? A guest post by A. Harris, HucksArmy.com Even though they are fierce rivals for the Republican nomination, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have been, for a long time, two of my top choices: Huckabee number one. Romney number two or three. I have some concern over Romney’s position changes on abortion, gun control, the Bush tax cuts, etc… But for the sake of all of you who have traveled that well-beaten path many times already, I don’t want to question Romney’s sincerity here. Huckabee’s positions have simply been stronger and more consistent...

Skilled and highly-motivated Poles 'push British graduates to back of the jobs queue'By STEVE DOUGHTY - More by this author » Last updated at 23:28pm on 30th December 2007Skilled and highly-motivated Polish workers are winning jobs ahead of British university graduates, the leader of the CBI warned. Employers prefer to hire Eastern European staff because they are more capable than supposedly well-qualified Britons, Richard Lambert said. The low employability of British young people was "depressing", he added. Scroll down for more...Class of 2007: Warsaw University graduates with their sights on Britain  His remarks in a speech to university vice-chancellors...

A new Arizona law against employing illegal immigrants has shaken businesses, scared workers, delighted advocates of stricter immigration controls and added to tensions in a state split over who belongs here and who does not. And that is even before the law’s scheduled effective date, Jan. 1. ...Advocates for immigrants contend that, at a minimum, hundreds of people unauthorized to work have left the state or been fired. Some school districts have at least partly attributed enrollment drops to the law. Though the housing slump and seasonal economic factors make it difficult to pin down how much is attributable to...

U.S. Manufacturing Obituaries Premature by: Heyecan Veziroglu, December 03, 2007 Instead of mischaracterizing the significance and meaning of the U.S. trade deficit and assuming that the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs four years ago requires a tough response today, policymakers should try to attain a better understanding of the condition of U.S. manufacturing, Cato Institute policy analyst Daniel Ikenson pointed out in a Capitol Hill briefing that the think tank held recently. While the U.S.-China trade deficit for goods and services combined has been growing at approximately 23% per annum, the United States remains the world’s most prolific manufacturer,...

A disappointing October sales report Thursday sent a clear signal to retailers that they’ll have to pull out all the stops to get shoppers into their stores this holiday as declining home values, tighter credit terms and rising gas prices appear to have left consumers feeling spent. The nation’s biggest chain stores posted the second consecutive month of weak sales results, underscoring their concerns that sales growth this holiday season could be the slowest in five years. “Consumers are exerting a lot of caution,” said Mandy Putnam, vice president at TNS Retail Forward Inc., a Columbus, Ohio-based market research and...

Hi all. I would like to solicit some advice. My employer of four months is reneging on the terms of my employment. I made full disclosure during my interview process, but they are claiming internal communication errors between HR and the hiring executive. I have technical expertise that they want, and they are trying to beat me up to get the info. They are a very large multi-national. They want me to violate existing contractual obligations, and are threatening dire legal consequences if they don't get their way. Any freepers want to help a david slay a goliath?

My family's favorite television show these days is "Dirty Jobs." This Discovery Channel program stars Mike Rowe, who travels the country in search of real-world jobs that are, shall we say, unpleasant. Workers get well and truly dirty. And in each episode Rowe performs one or two of these jobs -- getting dirty himself so that viewers at home can learn vividly about many of the dirty jobs that (as the show's motto proclaims) "make civilized life possible." Rowe has climbed into a pit of baby alligators on a Louisiana alligator farm, helped to hot-tar a roof, collected garbage in...

TAMPA - A contractor in Mississippi has withdrawn a government application to allow up to 400 foreign workers to enter the United States to take welding jobs at Tampa's largest shipyard, an official with Florida's Agency for Workforce Innovation said Wednesday. The application would have led to filling jobs at Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair Co. with immigrant workers, but it was withdrawn after a Florida labor group objected, said Lisa Scott, a program manager for the agency in Tallahassee. A key objection was that a required job notice to alert local workers to the Tampa job opportunities was posted...

Delpeyrat is the kind of company French president Nicolas Sarkozy believed he would give a boost to when he introduced a measure on tax-free overtime pay earlier this month. As one of France’s leading foie gras producers, every October Delpeyrat has the arduous task of recruiting the same 260 seasonal workers needed to ensure that production at its factory in south-west France keeps up with the flood of pre-Christmas orders. The job is easier said than done. With students back at university during autumn and a local population of just 7,500 people – 32,000 if you count the surrounding satellite...

The number of US workers filing new claims for jobless aid fell a larger-than-expected 12,000 last week, the government said on Thursday, while the number of longer-term unemployed unexpectedly fell to its lowest level since June. Meanwhile, a separate report showed, import prices rose a larger-than-expected 1 percent in September, boosted by rising petroleum prices. Excluding a 5.4 percent gain in imported petroleum prices, import prices fell 0.2 percent last month, the Labor Department said. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a 0.9 percent rise in import prices in September. Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits fell to 308,000...

Last month, pundits on all sides of the aisle began hyperventilating when Labor reported a decline in non-farm employment for the first time in four years. The loss of 4,000 jobs signaled an oncoming recession, an end to growth, and disaster for the Republicans in 2008. Combined with the volatility of the bond markets, it seemed that the good times had crashed to an end. Today, however, Labor announced the new numbers for September -- and a little change in August's tallies (emphases mine): Employment rose in September, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 4.7 percent, the Bureau...

A voter opinion poll sponsored by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce shows that Coloradans are increasingly jittery about the economy and not likely to vote in favor of sweeping reforms that could result in tax increases. The poll shows the public also solidly supports drilling at the Roan Plateau, especially if tax revenues are used to fund higher education. Environmental groups immediately blasted the poll methodology, however, arguing the question about the Roan inappropriately tied proposed Roan Plateau drilling with foreign crude oil imports. There are no crude oil deposits in the leasing area, the groups said. About 60...

U.S. worker productivity rebounded, growing at the fastest pace in nearly two years, while wage pressures eased sharply in the spring -- developments that should reduce inflation worries. The Labor Department reported Thursday that productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, jumped to an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent in the April-June quarter, even better than the 1.8 percent increase that was originally reported. Wage pressures, as measured by unit labor costs, slowed to an annual growth rate of 1.4 percent, slower than the initial estimate that labor costs were rising at a 2.1 percent rate. Rising...

I hope my fellow FReepers will permit me this Vanity Post, as this is a subject that hits very close to home, and I need the responses of as many of you as possible. On television and radio, I hear President Bush and Sean Hannity extoll the virtues of America's "strong economy and low unemployment". My home is Ventura County, California, north of Los Angeles, south of Santa Barbara. My wife and I returned here in July 2006, having spent four rain-soaked years in Seattle, where I was a project support contractor at Boeing. I was brought in as a...

In Sidney, Montana the owner of the local McDonald's fast food joint cannot get workers to staff his restaurant. This sounds like a bad thing and for owner John Francis, it is, but, this loss of workers is because of the good economic news and the low unemployment rates that is occurring throughout the Western United States. According to a recent report by the AP, unemployment rates have been as low as 2% in specific areas and no higher than a general rate of 3.5 in the North Western states, a rate that has been dropping steadily over the last...

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - Officials from the Federal Reserve on Saturday warned of dangers from a rising tide of trade disputes and the harmful impact on what one otherwise termed a "resilient" United States economy. Three regional Fed presidents steered clear of current economic or monetary policy topics at a panel discussion on the southern U.S. economy at the Southern Governors' Association conference. The presidents of the St. Louis, Dallas and Atlanta Feds, respectively, mostly focused on the dangers of protectionism and the need for an educated and flexible work force to cope with rising foreign competition. The governors convened...

<p>A generation ago, employers were still lamenting the poor technical abilities of their entry-level workers. Well, that’s not much of an issue anymore, thanks to the omnipresence of computers, cellphones and the Internet.</p> <p>In a survey of 100 human resources executives, only 5 percent said that recent college graduates lacked computer or technology skills, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm.</p>