Archive for category Careers
Mixed signals on Arizona jobs
by Betty Beard - Nov. 20, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Arizona has now gained jobs for three months in a row.
Although many of the jobs are seasonal, such as sales clerks and hotel service workers, the increase is still good news. Seasonal job growth virtually disappeared last year for the first time in a decade.
However, the job market is expected to remain rocky well into 2010. Many employees still are generally working short weeks or have been on furlough. That means there is still an opportunity to give existing employees more hours before employers hire again.
The total number of Arizona jobs is 6.8 percent below a year ago, meaning full recovery may be years away.
But analysts are happy to see seasonal hires back. The state gained 13,200 jobs from September to October, the Arizona Department of Commerce reported Thursday. In October 2008, Arizona lost 2,200 jobs.
“Seasonal hiring is much better,” said Frank Curtis, director of data systems for the Commerce Department.
In October, 2,600 jobs were added in retail, particularly department, food and beverage stores. Leisure and hospitality, a sector that includes hotel and restaurant positions, also added 2,600 jobs. Employment services added 4,800 positions, and many of those are believed to be seasonal.
The unemployment rate, however, rose to 9.3 percent in October from 9.1 percent in September and is still expected to rise into double digits next year. Arizona’s rate remains below the national rate of 10.2 percent, and the state’s rate, up 0.2 percent, rose at a slower pace than the national rate, up 0.4 percent, last month.
Unemployment rates are based on surveys that ask how many jobless people looked for work in the past month. Job numbers are based on surveys that ask businesses and organizations how many jobs they have.
Jack York, a Commerce Department economist, said because both the number of jobs and unemployment rate went up, it means there aren’t enough jobs for everyone who is looking or that more people are looking for work.
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Hiring Boom in Mortgage Restructuring
by Kyle Stock - Nov. 19, 2009
The Wall Street Journal
Mortgage restructuring for strapped homeowners has emerged as a rare growth area in the economy as companies in the field keep hiring.
Four of the largest mortgages servicers — Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. — have collectively hired almost 17,000 people this year, mostly to work with financially ailing homeowners. With the number of defaults rising, many are planning to keep adding staff.
“We’ve hired folks, we’ve transferred folks within the company and everyone is working overtime. All hands on deck is really the right analogy,” said J.P. Morgan Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly.
In October, about 12.4% of the 56 million U.S. households with mortgages — or about 6.9 million households — were 30 days or more overdue, or in the foreclosure process, according to LPS Applied Analytics, a research firm in Denver.
Wells Fargo, which services one in six U.S. mortgages, has almost doubled its staff working on restructurings, adding close to 7,000 employees this year. Citigroup has boosted its staff by about 54%, adding 1,400 positions. In Arizona, one of the states hit hardest by the subprime disaster, Citigroup opened a new service center staffed by 800 mortgage negotiators.
Loan-servicing companies report that people with a wide variety of backgrounds are applying for the jobs, from rental-car service representatives to former chief executives of small mortgage brokerages that went under.
9 Insider Secrets to Getting Hired
by Liz Wolgemuth - Nov. 16, 2009
U.S.News
Tips from hiring managers, executives, HR managers, and career coaches
While searching for work alongside 16 million people who are angling for the same openings, getting a hiring manager to tell you why you didn’t get hired is about as easy as actually getting the job. But one of the best things you can do is examine your job search with a critical eye: Is your résumé really a good advertisement for your skills? Does your nail-gnawing habit turn off prospective employers? Do you tend to make your interviewers a little nervous?
[Slide Show: 9 Insider Secrets to Getting Hired.]
Some of the most important elements of a successful job search are details. Here are nine tips to follow and details to consider, offered by the experts: hiring managers, executives, human resources managers, and career coaches who helm the U.S.News Outside Voices: On Careers blog.
Fine-tune your cover letter. Suppose you’re a manager, and you’re making your way through a thick stack of plain-vanilla résumés. You barely have a moment to scan a cover letter, and when you do, it appears to have been written by someone who knows your company’s name but doesn’t seem to have spent much time getting to know the business. You toss it. Employers want to know that you’re interested in them specifically. You should fine-tune your résumé and cover letter to suit the position. “Spend two hours going through the company’s website, executive LinkedIn profiles, blogs, and industry articles—before you even touch your résumé or cover letter,” says G. L. Hoffman, chairman of Jobdig.com and blogger at Whatwoulddadsay.com. “Only then can you do a decent job with both.”
Watch your body language at a job interview. Employers are looking for the candidate with the best knowledge and experience, but rarely do they hire for work skills at the expense of social skills. If you lack self-awareness, it shows. And it doesn’t look good. Even in the critical small talk before the interview, make eye contact when you’re speaking, smile when it’s appropriate, and look alert, says Karen Burns, author of the The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use
What Job Seekers Can Expect in 2010
Market Mix Up
by Liz Wolgemuth - Nov. 13, 2009 09:08 AM
USNews.com
President Obama summed up the precarious nature of today’s economy and job market in a recent interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper. “Now that we’ve rescued the economy and the economy is growing,” Obama said, “businesses aren’t yet hiring.” Indeed, it’s strange to see a “rescued” economy in which nearly 16 million unemployed face a paltry 2.5 million openings each month. Employers have not stopped cutting jobs, and the unemployment rate soared to 10.2 percent last month.
[See the best places to find a job.]
With 2010 just around the corner, everyone is crossing their fingers for a better year. Here are a few things you can expect:
Washington will keep trying to create jobs: The gross domestic product climbed 3.5 percent in the third quarter, while payrolls continued to fall. This is no doubt proof of the rule that employment is a lagging indicator. But some economists see it as particularly lagging at this point. The Conference Board’s employment trends index, which takes into account eight labor market indicators, rose in October. It was the second consecutive month of growth. (September’s rise had been the first since January 2008.) The index numbers suggest job losses would end by early next year, and “that’s a very optimistic statement compared to the consensus at this point,” says Gad Levanon, senior economist at the Conference Board.
When the private sector isn’t creating jobs, government tends to step in by lowering taxes, creating incentives, or spending to spur hiring. President Obama signed a bill providing another federally funded unemployment extension Friday and said he would likely do more: “My economic team is looking at ideas such as additional investments in our aging roads and bridges, incentives to encourage families and businesses to make buildings more energy-efficient, additional tax cuts for businesses to create jobs, additional steps to increase the flow of credit to small businesses, and an aggressive agenda to promote exports and help American manufacturers sell their products around the world.” The White House has stopped short of calling these tools “stimulus.” On Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told colleagues Tuesday that Senate Democrats would take up a bill aimed at job creation, but did not elaborate on its details, according to the Hill.
Obama has lost his way on jobs
by Jeffrey Sachs - Nov. 10, 2009
Financial Times - FT.com
The past week brought news of US double-digit unemployment and the Federal Reserve’s decision to maintain near-zero interest rates. Both pieces of news expose the inadequacy of US economic policymaking. The Obama administration’s stimulus policies are not well-targeted. The Republican alternatives are even worse. Both sides are missing the key fact: the US economy needs structural change that requires a new set of economic tools.
Consumer and investment demands are too low for full employment. Consumer sectors such as housing no longer generate adequate spending by households and businesses.
Potential investors exploring more promising areas, such as low-carbon energy and infrastructure, are stymied because of the lack of a clear policy framework. Neither the Keynesian approach favoured by the Obama administration, nor the tax-cuts favoured by Republicans, addresses the problem at this structural source.
Following a Keynesian approach, the Obama administration has focused on restoring consumer spending. They have gone about this with a combination of near-zero interest rates, massive Fed financing of mortgages and various consumption incentives, such as rebates for new homebuyers and cash for clunkers.
During the previous bubble, the US consumer was encouraged to over-borrow. Recreating a new bubble is like offering just one more drink, on the government’s account, to overcome a mass hangover. With budget deficits of about 10 per cent of gross domestic product, government spending needs to be far more consequential than temporary boosts to consumer spending.
The Republican alternative is equally fatuous. For every problem there is a single Republican answer: tax cuts. Simple arithmetic reveals the stunning shortsightedness of this proposition. The federal government collects about 17 per cent of GDP in tax revenues. That roughly equals the outlays on social security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, defence and interest payments on debt.
All the rest – roads, rail, clean energy, science and technology, diplomacy, international disease control, space, education, job training, water, transport, courts, poverty relief, homeland security, conservation, climate adaptation – is financed on borrowed money. All of these critical areas are underfunded, which hinders productivity, national security and private investment.
There are three parts of a long-term solution. The first is to promote greater exports, partly through dollar depreciation and partly through expanded government support for export financing, for example extended to credit-constrained low-income countries that want to purchase US-produced technology. Dollar depreciation is under way but other kinds of export promotion have not begun.
Can the Broken Job Market Be Fixed?
By Liz Wolgemuth Oct 7, 2009
U.S. News
The White House is under fire for a worsening employment situation
Nearly three decades ago, as unemployment climbed in step with the deficit, President Reagan turned to the radio waves to defend his economic plan against charges that it wasn’t yet producing the desired results. ”You’ve also been told our program hasn’t worked,” Reagan said. ”Well, of course it hasn’t. It hasn’t really started yet.”
Sound familiar? Following Friday’s jobs report, President Obama said he was still working on “implementing the recovery act that’s already helped to bring back America from the brink of a much worse situation.” Vice President Biden summarized the administration’s message when he was asked about the thinking on a second stimulus: “We’re working on finishing the first one here,” Biden said. Reagan’s plan in 1982 was tax cuts, compared with the stimulus package in place today, but the message is similar: patience.
[See the best places to find a job.]
Since the start of the recession, nearly all the economic experts and talking heads have warned that employment is a lagging indicator and that the job market would be lousy even as the economy began to recover. This job market has not disappointed those predictions. While other areas of the economy appear to be improving, the Labor Department reported that employers cut an additional 263,000 jobs in September, leaving 15.1 million workers unemployed. There is some worrisome evidence, however, that these data are not merely economics as usual and that this job market is performing much worse than most had expected. Nearly 4out of 10 unemployed workers have been out of work for six months or more. Unemployment benefits are expected to be extended by Congress again, even though they already last 79 weeks for eligible workers in hard-hit states. The problem is clear—there are not nearly enough jobs to go around—but the solution is complicated.
In general, governments can spend money to create jobs, says Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. But Obama’s problems are also political: If Congress is not inclined to spend, the president’s tool belt is much smaller.
Cities Where Jobs Recovery Will Be Slowest
Market Mix Up
by Liz Wolgemuth - Oct 29, 2009 12:00
USNews.com
It sure sounds like the Great Depression in El Centro, Calif. In this city near the Mexican border, the unemployment rate hit a whopping 30.1 percent in September, the Labor Department reports. But context is crucial. In 2000, when the national unemployment rate
bottomed out at 3.9 percent, the unemployment rate in El Centro was at 20 percent.
[See the best places to find a job.]
picture is so different in some cities that they would hardly seem to be in the same country. In Bismarck, N.D., the unemployment rate was 2.9 percent last month. Personal income in North Dakota grew more than in any other state in the second quarter—1.5 percent, compared with 0.2 percent nationally. While the nation’s job market is awful overall—thousands of Americans are exhausting their unemployment benefits daily—it’s clear that the true jobs picture is as varied as the nation’s topography. With the promise of a recovery on the horizon, new data show that the employment upturn will be regional as well.
According to a new forecast from IHS Global Insight, unemployment rates in some cities will remain stubbornly high a year from now. As many as 16 cities—in California, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Indiana—will have unemployment rates higher than 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. Some of those cities were among the hardest hit by the housing market crisis or had economies highly dependent on manufacturing, IHS reports.
[See how healthcare reform could get you hired.]
In El Centro, unemployment will be as high as 26 percent next year, IHS estimates. “In the central valley of California, unemployment rates are very much affected by the agricultural economy,” says Jim Diffley, regional group managing director at IHS. Other California cities where IHS says unemployment will stay above 15 percent include Merced, Modesto, Fresno, Redding, Stockton, and Hanford-Corcoran. While unemployment rates are driven by the makeup of regional economies, they are also greatly affected by demographics. “Younger or more immigrant-prone areas have always had higher unemployment,” Diffley says. In other words, don’t interpret El Centro’s high unemployment rate as an indication that it has been the city most affected by the recession.
