Free Republic

FERGUSON • In less than half an hour, thousands of people arrived, dressed in jeans and suits, with their résumés in hand. The line to get into a room where dozens of potential employers sat waiting was at least 45 minutes long. A job fair sponsored by the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis on Saturday drew about 5,000. The event, held at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus, was supposed to end at 2 p.m. But it ran more than an hour long just so everyone who had waited in line could interview. Damon Williams, 38, said frustration...

There is a new form of cyberbullying out there and it is scary, because it could derail the professional career of any conservative - even those working in apolitical jobs. Slimy folks like “Busta Troll” are hijacking Facebook pages of conservatives, replacing the content with goats and anti-conservative messages. Some believe a goat is used because it is a Satanic symbol; many of the conservatives are targeted because of their Christian or Jewish views. The conservative Citizens’ Post page on Facebook was hijacked by the “Goatz Alliance,” which also goes by the name “Busta Troll,” by pretending to be from...

"MCDonalds Mcdonalds, can't you see...Seven-forty is not for me..." The chant, recited through a megaphone, was being led by a man identifed as a Christian Pastor ("Reverend Charles" we'll call him), near a McDonalds restaurant in Detroit last week. Dozens of people in the parking lot uttered the chant with him, as the crowd sought to malign McDonalds restaurants while at the same time demanding a $15.00 per hour wage. "They want fifteen, they want a union, they want to be organized" Pastor Charles told the tv news crews. "The McDonalds corporation should allow that to happen immediately." The illogic...

new report shows some 53 million Americans—or 34 percent of the U.S. workforce—are now working as freelancers in some capacity. "This is more than an economic change," asserts the report, a joint effort from the Freelancer's Union and freelance markeplaces oDesk and eLance. It's also "a cultural and social shift" that will "have major impacts on how Americans conceive of and organize their lives, their communities, and their economic power." The first and last time anyone looked at the freelance worker population in the U.S. was 2004, in a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Back then the GAO...

(CNSNews.com) - The number of foreign-born individuals holding jobs in the United States hit a recorded high of 24,639,000 in August, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS has been tracking the number of foreign-born workers annually since 2005 and monthly since 2007. The BLS does not distinguish between foreign-born individuals who are in the United States legally and those who are here illegally. “The foreign born are those who reside in the United States but who were born outside the country or one of its outlying areas to parents who were not U.S. citizens,”...

Complete headline: Labor Participation Rate Drops To Lowest Since 1978; People Not In Labor Force Rise To Record 92.3 Million It is almost as if the Fed warned us this would happen. In a note released yesterday, a Fed working paper titled "Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects", looked at the US labor force and concluded that "while we see some of the current low level of the participation rate as indicative of labor market slack, we do not expect the participation rate to show a substantial increase from current levels as labor market conditions continue to improve."...

Americans pride themselves on an egalitarian society open to all. But some equality and inequality exist uneasily side by side. And the U.S. has never resolved this contradiction.If the world is lucky enough to produce historians of the early 21st century, one question seems certain to grab their attention. How did so much equality coexist with so much inequality? Economic inequality—the difference between the richest and the poorest, or between the rich and everyone else —has reached some of its highest levels ever, both in the U.S. and at around the world. Yet our time is also marked by a...

The total number of working-age (16 to 65) immigrants (legal and illegal) holding a job in North Carolina increased by 313,000 from the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2014...The number of working-age natives with a job declined by 32,000 over the same time.

Hoping to get some advice from FReepers who are hiring managers for tech positions - specifically system/network admins. I've been in the field for almost 25 years. Been consistently employed with a consistently rising salary. Now mid 40s and currently employed. But I would like to relocate to another city where we own property. I don't know anyone there other than our neighbors who are either retired, farmers, or both. The area I'm looking at is Parkersburg WV. Not exactly a mecca of tech positions, but a few pop up occasionally on the job boards. I've been sending out resumes...

MEGAN THOMPSON: Great news for the divorced 58-year-old father and professional driver who needed the extra money to help pay child support. Jones filled out the paperwork, submitted a drug test and waited to hear when he could start. Instead, he got a different kind of call. KEVIN JONES: And Human Resources said, “There’s a problem with your background check.” And I said, “What problem?” “Yeah, there’s some criminal stuff going on. You need to talk to them.” MEGAN THOMPSON: It turned out the background check – conducted by a company now called Sterling BackCheck – showed convictions for drunk...

America has a deficit of workers. Willing workers. Capable workers. Skilled, or at least semi-skilled workers, who can do a job and do it well. There are at least one million jobs that go begging day after day if only employers could find workers to fill them. This probably seems hard-to-believe. After all, how can America have a worker shortage when we have about 18 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed? When the real unemployment rate is 12 percent? Well certainly the economy isn’t creating nearly as many jobs as it should – in large part because of regulatory...

SEATTLE - Popular online retailer Zulily is planning to add about 900 jobs in central Ohio as part of new tax credit deal from the state. The Seattle-based company says most of the positions at the new call center will be in customer service. The move is expected to generate $28 million by 2017. This comes in addition to Zulily’s existing facility in Obetz. As part of a tax agreement, the Ohio Development Services Agency says the company will receive a 75%, 12-year tax credit in exchange for operating in Ohio for at least 15 years. Zulily is an online...

A blockbuster new poll obtained by Breitbart News reveals that a majority of likely voters want to push the pause button on massive immigration, which allowed legal immigrants a chance to more fully assimilate while the middle class expanded as wages increased. As President Barack Obama considers giving more guest-worker permits to companies that have laid off American workers and granting temporary work permits and executive amnesty to millions of more illegal immigrants, a comprehensive survey found that a majority of likely voters want even fewer legal immigrants. The poll found that "half of Americans age 65 and over" and...

The Deloitte University Press has a very interesting, and comprehensive study on job gains and losses, by type of job, and state by state. The biggest winners are states involved in energy production, finance, or healthcare. The biggest losers are states that did not recover from the real estate bust, or lost population due to emigration. With that overview, let's dive deeper into the Geography of Jobs. Only now, as we reach the fifth anniversary of the end of the recession, has employment in the United States finally regained its pre-recession peak. The national story of slow recovery obscures the...

The Labor Department just released statistics that show that job openings in June are at a 13-year high. But while hiring is also up, it's not nearly at the levels that the job openings are. For job-hunters, the disconnect can be frustrating and painful. What's going on, and how can you get around this? * Not all jobs posted will be filled. Sometimes businesses post jobs with no intention of actually filling them. They're looking for applicants to put in their files so that they have a supply of candidates when a job does open up. Sometimes, positions are posted,...

One of the dividing lines between liberals and conservatives has always been the understanding of how economics works. Conservatives know how economics works; the force of supply and demand as well the true value of work. Liberals are like children who see the last twenty dollar bill in their mom’s wallet and say “Yippee, we’re rich! Let’s go to McDonald’s.” Last week the child-like liberals dropped their “I’m-so-intelligent-because-I’m-on-television” masks and let us see how dumb they really are. Led down the path of stupid is as stupid says, Savannah Guthrie reported that a Minnesota restaurant has added a new line...

According to a new report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Americans are earning 23% less today than what they made before the 2008 recession for the same jobs. This terrible statistic doesn’t even take into account Americans still struggling with unemployment, and please remember that the real unemployment rate is over 20%. That figure reflects all the Americans who’ve given up even looking for jobs that just aren’t there in Obama’s economy. This issue of middle class wage stagnation is directly related to the current debate about amnesty. According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 70% of Americans believe illegal...

On the surface, California's job market is booming. The state has now recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, and done so at a faster pace than all but five states. The growth, though, belies a troubling imbalance. The fastest job creation has come in low-wage sectors, in which pay has declined. At the high end of the salary scale, a different dynamic has taken hold: rising pay and improving employment after rounds of consolidation. Most distressing, middle-wage workers are losing out on both counts. "People talk about it like an hourglass," said Tracey Grose, vice president of the...

Four in 10 U.S. households are straining financially five years after the Great Recession — many struggling with tight credit, soaring education debt and profound issues related to savings and retirement, according to a new Federal Reserve survey. The wide-ranging Fed study assessing the economic well-being of Americans shows that the economy has made progress to the point where most households said they were "living comfortably" or doing OK financially. But almost 40% reported last fall that their families were "just getting by" or struggling to do so, and more people said their financial situation was worse rather than better...

A new Seattle-based startup called Poachable wants to play matchmaker—not with your love life, but with your career.Poachable’s online book of possible employee-employer matches may well change the way people engage with the often dreaded and largely outdated process of searching for a job. But it’s more of a flirtation with the idea of finding a new job than a mission to marry a new job as soon as possible. It’s the Tinder of the online job search, not Match.com.Poachable cofounder Tom Leung, a former Microsoft and Google employee, may well have identified the new "sweet spot" in recruiting. As...