Posts Tagged ‘employment’

Own A Piece Of Facebook! TILE Two-Liners 1.3.11 >> 1.7.11

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

MONDAY

  • The National Weather Service and the stock market go together like frigid weather forecasts and rising oil prices. That’s cold. (Reuters)
  • Big news: “It’s hard to anticipate the direction of financial markets.” (thanks for the heads-up, Wall Street Journal)

TUESDAY

  • Middle-aged white guys at Goldman Sachs value Facebook at $50 billion, scramble to get a piece of it before the company’s stock becomes publicly available. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 6,000 new jobs at dollar stores are still new jobs, aren’t they? (CNN)

WEDNESDAY

  • Microsoft-Google deathmatch: Who gets to provide email services to the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife? (Wall Street Journal)

THURSDAY

  • Reason 1,174 to be glad you’re a person and not a state: States lost an average of 30% of their revenue in 2009. (The Washington Post)

FRIDAY

A W-2 is…

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

A W-2 is a tax form that your employer gives you to help you fill out your federal tax return correctly. Basically, the form adds up all your wages and tips from that particular job. Every employer is required to send you a W-2 before the national tax filing deadline.

But the W-2 isn’t the whole story. If you’ve made money some other way – by working as an independent consultant, for example, or by collecting earnings on your investments, you’ll have to add up and report that income by yourself.

Nonprofits Added Jobs During The Recession

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

What?? But yes, it’s true

  • The Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society released a study showing that nonprofit job openings actually grew from mid-2007 to mid-2009, while employers in the for-profit sector were shedding jobs left and right.
  • One explanation for this surprising trend is stimulus funding, which pumped more money into public programs in response to the economic crisis. But not every area of the nonprofit world grew equally. Social-service nonprofits did relatively well, but that is likely because the whole social-service sector (including for-profits) did well.
  • There is concern that when stimulus funding runs out, the job situation in the nonprofit sector will reverse.

Facts & Figures

  • Nonprofit jobs in the 21 states studied grew by an average of 2.5% each year
  • In the same time frame, those states lost jobs at a rate of about 3.3% each year
  • Job growth in the nonprofit sector actually grew more between 2007-2009 than it had between 2001-2007

Best Quote

“The service area has been growing, historically, pretty fast, much more so than manufacturing.” – Lester M. Salamon, Director of the Center for Civil Society Studies

Things Looking Up For Unemployed New Yorkers

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Employers in New York went on a hiring frenzy in July.

  • Several thousand unemployed New Yorkers were hired in July, marking the city’s best job growth since January.
  • The nonprofit sector, performing arts and restaurants were the most notable gainers, while transportation, hospitals and private educational services cut back.
  • Manufacturing jobs are still scarce and apparel manufacturers have shed 6,000 jobs since the recession began.

Facts & Figures

  • New York added about 24,600 jobs in July.
  • New York City’s unemployment rate was 9.4% in July.

Best Quote

“It’s very strong numbers in terms of jobs. Just about every sector performed above their historical averages.” – James Brown, Economist, Labor Department.

New Job-Training Programs Are Looking Good

Monday, July 26th, 2010

A new report shows job-training programs prove to be a great way to bolster employment numbers.

  • Job-training programs typically collaborate with specific industries (like construction and health care, for example).
  • Participation in a job-training program can significantly increase an unemployed or low-skilled worker’s likelihood of getting hired.
  • Certain elements from the programs contribute to their success, such as linking to employers and screening the participants.
  • These programs must identify employers’ needs, screen for suitable program participants, be able to fund the training and hire the staff needed to train.

Facts and Figures

  • Program participants earned an average of 29% more than those who didn’t attend.
  • Job-training programs are active in 40 states.

Best Quote

“It’s very easy for someone to say, ‘We have a sectoral-employment strategy,’ particularly when more money may be coming from Washington. We really wanted to make sure we were doing this with our eyes wide open, to help scale the positive findings in the study.” – Nadva K. Shmavonian, President of Public/Private Ventures, which authored the report

How can five percent unemployment possibly be a good thing?

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

For an individual, being unemployed when you desperately need a job is never a good thing. However, a little unemployment in an economy is not necessarily a bad thing. First of all, some people don’t want to work – at least not in jobs that get listed on tax returns like stay-at-home moms and dads. That’s called voluntary unemployment, but it really shouldn’t even be counted in unemployment statistics. There are also always going to be people who are between jobs – having just left one job and waiting to start another, but not in real danger of long-term unemployment or desperate to find work. Economists call that “frictional unemployment.” Even if everybody who wanted a job had one, there would still be some “frictional” unemployment as people transitioned between jobs.

In reality, however, it’s extremely rare that every single person who wants a job is employed. Unemployment moves up and down in a cycle along with the rest of the economy and, while increased unemployment in a minor economic downturn is not a good thing, it isn’t an economic death knell. Some people will also be involuntarily unemployed because of structural unemployment – unemployment that happens because wages (the price of jobs) can’t change with demand or the right types of employees aren’t available for existing jobs.

Structural unemployment can be lowered in the short term by sparking inflation, but the unemployment goes back to its previous rate, so trying to push the unemployment rate below a certain level tends to make the economy unstable. Milton Friedman, who won the Noble Prize for Economics in the 1960s, called this level “natural unemployment” or NAIRU (the non-accelerating interest rate of unemployment). It’s the level of unemployment in an economy at which prices and jobs are stable. The NAIRU for the United States in the past two decades has been about 5%, and for most of that time, the economy has been quite healthy.

So, it’s not good if YOU are unemployed (assuming you want a job), but unemployment is a natural, unavoidable part of any economy.

Pros Help Nonprofits Kick It Up A Notch…

Monday, June 15th, 2009
Lawyers and business professionals are taking their big business breeding to the nonprofit world.
  • A growing number of lawyers and business professionals is flocking to the nonprofit world. Some made the move because they lost their jobs, while others are craving a career change.
  • Usually college students and recent grads seek out these nonprofit jobs, eager to work but also to learn. This new surge of professionals, armed with their experience and expertise, is extremely valuable to nonprofits.
  • Nonprofits are now prioritizing applicants with business and legal backgrounds, making them more competitive than ever.

Facts & Figures

  • Peace Corps applications are up 16% from last year, with a 50% increase among applicants over 50 years old.
  • Teach for America applications are up 42% this year, with an 80% increase among working professional applicants (rather than college students).

Best Quote

“Business-savvy volunteers are particularly good at helping nonprofits do more with less. These people are setting up credit unions, writing grants, managing resoures – it’s called indirect service.” – Sandy Scott, Director of Public Affairs at AmeriCorps