While improvements to the employment picture have been seen in recent months, the unemployment rate is persistently high, and companies are not hiring. Even if job losses slow, the fact that businesses are reluctant to hire more workers continues to cause problems in the overall economy. Only seven states reported that there were job gains in September, and the jobless rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8%.
Employment is one of the cornerstones of the economy, since the economy relies so much on the ability of people to spend money. Businesses rely on consumer spending to help them with meeting …read more

One of the things that has been a feature of economic discussions lately has been the likelihood of a “jobless recovery.” That is, there are signs that the economic recession is over, and that things are improving (even though this is happening slowly). However, the job market continues to shed jobs. It is true that these job losses are happening at a slower pace than they were a few months ago, but the rate of loss is still higher than many analysts would like to see. As a result, there has been talk about a jobless recovery.
Losses will not be …read more

In order to compensate for increasing amounts of demand for several of its products, electronics retailer Best Buy plans to boost its seasonal staff for the holiday season. According to the company, Best Buy has experienced a surge in demand for products such as televisions compared to last year and has decided to increase hiring accordingly.
 
Demand for flat-screen televisions, smartphones, and netbooks has increased over the last year, with flat-screen television sales in July actually exceeding sales numbers reached by the company last December. However, Best Buy is still struggling with falling same-store sales, which declined 3.9 percent last quarter, …read more

One of the biggest personal finance worries people have is with regard to their jobs. The prospect of losing a job is quite scary, since it provides the income necessary for you to buy what you want and need. Without a job, a host of other financial issues become prominent. This is one of the reasons that the fact that jobless claims have dropped.
However, even with unemployment beginning to ease, it is important to realize that the labor market is far from stable. According to The Street, in a normal economy claims are about 325,000 a week. Even at their …read more

It appears as though some small business owners are beginning to feel more optimistic about the economy.

The latest news on employment is in, and it looks as though the unemployment rate has hit a 26-year high at 9.7%. Even though the report shows that the pace of job losses is slowing, the fact remains that the economy is still shedding jobs. And many agree that employment is an important economic indicator. After all, it provides insight into how many people have jobs (or don’t), and that in turn provides a look at the health of businesses and individuals.
But how does unemployment work as an economic indicator?
According to The Mortgage Reports, it works as a lagging economic …read more

What you should know about collecting unemployment benefits.

In order to save $500 million in costs next year, the U.S. Postal Service will offer buyouts to 30,000 of its workers, according to the agency itself. According to a news release, the USPS plans to negotiate with two employee unions and work out a deal that would allow the USPS to give financial incentives to certain employees so that they retire or resign early.
 
The American Postal Workers Union and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union have both settled on the agreement for this one-time offer, while employees represented by the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Rural …read more

Run your job hunt right.

Despite widespread economic uncertainty, social networking giant Facebook has shown no fear when it comes to expanding. While other companies continue to cut costs and slim down their employment, Facebook hopes to hire an additional 200 employees by the end of the year and has already snatched up several big-name industry players in the process.
 
So far, Facebook has lured Arturo Bejar, former Yahoo! security team leader that will now serve as Facebook’s director of engineering, and David Recordon, former employee and of blogging software maker Six Apart and one of the developers of the OpenID authentication software. Former Genentech CFO …read more