Job Market Monitor
Michel Cournoyer
US – Unemployment Claims : A very welcomed four-year low
(Excerpts from the Press Release) In the week ending July 7, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 350,000, a decrease of 26,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 376,000. The 4-week moving average was 376,500, a decrease of 9,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 386,250. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was … Continue reading
Autoworkers – 55% forced to ask family and friends for financial help three years after layoffs
Three years after losing their jobs, laid off autoworkers continue to struggle financially and personally, a new CAW report says. The second round of findings in the CAW’s three-year study of laid-off auto workers, found that 55 per cent of the 260 workers surveyed, have been forced to ask family and friends for financial help … Continue reading
MICROSOFT ADVERTISING – Layoffs
Microsoft Advertising confirmed that it cut a number of key advertising and marketing positions, underscoring our previous reports that the company may be in large part backing away from the advertising business. As a digital marketing evangelist at Microsoft Advertising, Carson had a very public role at the company: His job was to forge relationships … Continue reading
Obama Jobs Council – A Lot of Outsourcers
During the past two weeks, President Barack Obama’s campaign has blasted Republican challenger Mitt Romney as an “outsourcer,” focusing on his career with private equity firm Bain Capital. The Romney campaign hit back on Tuesday, claiming Obama’s stimulus package failed to protect American workers and helped create jobs overseas. If Romney really wanted a juicy … Continue reading
Neither Obama nor Romney Will Jump Start Jobs Growth
Last week’s weak unemployment report was bad news. But here’s an even more sobering piece of news. Even with jobs playing a central role in the campaign, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney is going to turn things around anytime soon. Here’s the problem, in a nutshell: Obama has a plan for job creation but … Continue reading
U.S. Army and the Skills Gap – Industry certifications to validate existing military personnel skills
Over the next five years, there will be up to a million military personnel returning to civilian life and getting into the U.S. civilian workforce. Juxtapose this with the 600,000 jobs currently open in advanced manufacturing and the anticipated need for 10 million skilled workers by 2020, and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) sees … Continue reading
Big Business – Primary driver of job creation ?
Cue the world’s smallest violin (again, I guess) for the country’s “job creators.” So BR emails me the other day that links here with the message “Have a field day with this crap” (not unlike many emails I get). So, off to the link I go to read the story. What I assume incensed the … Continue reading
GM beginning to reverse IT services outsourcing
GM now outsources about 90 percent of its IT services and provides 10 percent of that work in-house. Within the next three to five years, GM hopes to reverse those percentages in part by hiring “thousands” of new software developers, database experts and others globally, GM spokeswoman Juli Huston-Rough said. The IT overhaul is spearheaded … Continue reading
Skills Gap – There won’t be enough A & P (airframe and propulsion) licensed mechanics for an Airbus Assembly plant when in Mobile
That’s the word from companies that specialize in recruiting and hiring skilled workers for several industries, including the marine and airbus 380 in Vancouver (Photo credit: Cyprien) aviation industries. Bud Collins owns Eagle Marine Services in Irvington. He’s been placing skilled workers in marine jobs for 17 years, including ship building sites like Newport News, … Continue reading
Massachusetts – New Estimates – Jobs grew faster in 2011
A close examination of unemployment insurance data shows that Massachusetts has been gaining jobs faster than people thought, according to a new report issued Thursday by MassBenchmarks and the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Coastline (NASA, International Space Station, 06/27/11) (Photo credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center) But even the new numbers … Continue reading
Women and racial minorities – Why do inequalities persist?
While women and racial minorities have increasingly crossed the threshold into professional service organizations, the path to the top remains elusive. Why do inequalities persist? McGinn and Milkman study processes of cohesion, competition, and comparison by looking at career mobility in a single up-or-out professional service organization. Findings show that higher proportions of same-sex and … Continue reading
Youth Unemployment – Young Invincibles Calls for Action
Fresh off a win to keep student-loan interest rates down, a youth-advocacy group would like to channel that energy into improving the job market. Young Invincibles released a sobering employment report Tuesday showing 16.5 percent of Americans ages 16 to 24 are without work. Unemployment is 30.2 percent for young African-Americans and 20.5 percent for … Continue reading
Road Map to More Jobs
How different would conditions be today economically and politically if unemployment were 7 percent instead of its current 8.2 percent? For one thing, some two million unemployed workers would have jobs, and the rate of economic growth would be comfortably above 2 percent, instead of below that pace. This scenario could have been possible if … Continue reading
Unemployment is high not because businesses are shedding jobs but because no one is hiring
New Yorker has a terrific one-page summary by James Surowiecki of why so many job vacancies are left unfilled “for want of any sufficiently qualified candidates” while so many people (especially young people with university degrees) are unable to find work. It’s behind a pay wall, so here’s a synopsis: Unemployment is high not because … Continue reading
France – Skill Gap – GE Can’t Find Workers
Clara Gaymard, the head of General Electric Co.’s French unit, has been looking in vain for workers for a factory that makes valves for the oil and nuclear industries in Conde-sur-Noireau in western France. “The plant has 360 employees, 100 of whom will retire in the next four to five years, and we can’t find … Continue reading
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