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August Job Numbers Redux

They say bad news comes in threes, but what about good news?

While the unemployment rate edged up to 9.6 percent, there are a few things that cause us to take a “glass half full” perspective on U.S. employment this month. 

Yes, nonfarm payroll employment declined by -54,000 in August, BUT it was better than economist predictions that job loss could be up to -105,000

Secondly, June’s job loss was originally reported to be -221,000; it was revised to -175,000. And July’s number was revised from a loss of -131,000 to a decline of -54,000. (The Pollyanna in me is thinking about what August’s revision will be next month.)

Finally, while Government employment fell by -121,000, reflecting the departure of 114,000 temporary Census 2010 workers from federal government payrolls, private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly by adding 67,000 jobs.

Dean Maki of Barclays Capital told Forbes: “On balance, the upward revisions make the report a bit stronger than we expected. It does not change the recent trend of moderate growth in private payrolls and is inconsistent with fears that a sharp slowdown in the economy is underway.”

Here’s a look at how some of the major sectors fared in August:

• Health care increased by 28,000, with the largest gains occurring in ambulatory health care services (+17,000) and hospitals (+9,000).
• Manufacturing employment dropped by -27,000. A decline in motor vehicles and parts (-22,000) offset a gain of similar magnitude in July as the industry geared up for its annual retooling.
• Temporary help services, which have added 392,000 jobs since a recent employment low in September 2009, added 17,000 jobs.
• Construction employment was up by 19,000, partially reflected by the return of the payrolls of 10,000 workers who were on strike in July.
• Retail trade was relatively unchanged. A job gain among motor vehicle and parts dealers (+8,000) was essentially offset by losses in building materials and garden supply stores (-6,000).

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Are Savings Accounts a Thing of The Past?

On my childhood birthdays I’d look at the pile of presents at my Chuck E. Cheese party with a mix of excitement and anxiety. The excitement was always directed at the big boxes (which held cool things like EZ Bake Ovens) while the anxiety was caused by the small envelopes, which usually just held money.

Why my youthful disdain toward money? Because I had a savings account, that’s why. All the money I got for birthdays/Christmas/grade school graduation went straight to the bank, and my parents expected me to be happy when I exchanged a would-be shopping spree at Toys-R-Us for a deposit receipt and a lollipop. I was eight, and I was not happy.

Reflecting on those times now, I realize I’d be thrilled with a savings account as well-endowed as the one I had in fifth grade — its present-day counterpart is paltry, to put it optimistically. Though I know the importance of saving money, there are certain times when it seems almost impossible to save — a feeling that is shared by an increasing number of workers these days.

According to a new CareerBuilder survey: “Saving money is not an option for some workers, as one-third (33 percent) state that they do not participate in any programs such as 401(k), IRAs or retirement plans. One-in-three (30 percent) report that they don’t put any money aside into their savings each month, while 28 percent set aside $100 or less per month for savings and 14 percent save less than $50.”

The survey also reports that the number of workers living paycheck to paycheck has risen in the last year: 77 percent of workers report living paycheck to paycheck in 2010, compared with 61 percent who reported doing so in 2009.

Unfortunately, since we’re in the middle of a recession, it’s likely that many of us will be living with tight purse strings  for the foreseeable future.

Yet according to Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder, that may not be such a bad thing, since living on a budget  may ultimately make us more financially responsible. “The last 18 months have required some workers to tighten their day-to-day spending and make some adjustments to their financial futures,” says Haefner. “Our survey found that six-in-ten workers say that the recession has made them more fiscally responsible. Maintaining a budget is not only important now, but will better position workers – both personally and professionally – for the long run.”

When it comes to  budgeting, workers reported using the following tactics to help make ends meet:

•             Cut back on leisure activities – 54 percent

•             Used coupons or shopped at discount stores – 48 percent

•             Drove less to save on gas – 37 percent

•             Cancelled cable and other subscriptions – 12 percent

•             Used public transportation – 5 percent

Cut back on cable, carpooling to work and still stretching your paycheck thin? Haefner offers the following tips for getting the most out of your money and creating a livable budget:

Cut back where you can – That daily dose of Dunkin Donuts coffee can add up. Create a spreadsheet or keep a small notebook to track your expenses. At the end of the month, analyze where your money goes, and cut back where you’re spending unnecessarily.

Be saving savvy – While you may not be able to stash away a few hundred dollars each month, it’s still important to save what you can, even if it’s a small amount. If you tend to spend whatever is in your checking account, try setting up an automatic deposit into a savings account. 

Maximize your benefits– Talk to your HR department to see if there are any benefits you’re not taking advantage of.  Many companies offer perks like free museum admission, discounts at certain stores, etc. Also, if necessary, re-evaluate your benefits plan to make sure you’ve selected the right one for your budget.

For more on the recession and its effect on workers, check out:

Is Going Back to School the Right Move?

Workplace Fatalities Reach Record Low

Surprising Growth Industries

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Who’s Hiring This Week

Last week we brought you a list of 10 companies hiring…and, because we love you,  today we do it again. We try to cover a variety of industries with these lists. If you feel we’re leaving your industry of interest out, drop us a note in the comments!

The following are 10 companies throughout the US hiring right this very minute. So click on their names and see what they have to offer.

Charter College
Industry: Education
Sample job titles: Student finance systems coordinator, financial aid officer

LexisNexis
Industry: Data and research
Sample job titles: Research specialist, business analyst

DuPont
Industry: Manufacturing
Sample job titles: Manufacturing technology engineer, maintenance first line supervisor

Averitt Express
Industry: Transportation
Sample job titles: Local truck driver, CDL-A

Epsilon
Industry: Business strategy
Sample job titles: Senior database developer

Talascend
Industry: Design (staffing)
Sample job titles: Designer

MMPI
Industry: Construction and engineering
Sample job titles: Project manager, director of marketing (antiques)

US Bank
Industry: Finance
Sample job titles: Application security consultant, commercial lender

Randstad
Industry: Biotechnology and pharmacy (staffing)
Sample job titles: Chemistry Informatics Scientist, research associate in cell panel group

Ethan Allen Global
Industry: Retail
Sample job titles: Design consultant, softgoods specialist

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Networking Made Easy for Introverts

Does the thought of making small talk make you cringe? Does schmoozing make you feel like a schmuck? Devora Zack, author of “Networking for People Who Hate Networking: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed and the Underconnected,” is just like you and has written today’s guest post on this very topic.

Zack, who’s the president of Only Connect Consulting and an expert in personality and the workplace, travels the nation, rubbing elbows with and making presentations to executives in private industry, the public sector and federal agencies; she’s also an introvert … so who better to write about introvert networking than a person who shatters the stereotype?

Introverts Can Sizzle on Networking Job Search

By Devora Zack author of “Networking for People Who Hate Networking: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed and the Underconnected.”

To network or not to network?  That is the question.

What’s at stake?  Whatever you most want to accomplish; no biggie.

What if you don’t like networking and have no interest?  It drains you.  It never works.  You don’t have time.  You don’t need to.  It’s phony, self-serving, fake, inauthentic, superficial, conniving, manipulative and useless.

Hold it right there.

In my experience, people who claim to hate networking also believe they are not good at it.  The reverse is true.  People who hate networking fail at traditional networking by following advice never intended for them in the first place.  You have the raw materials to be a stellar networker.  You are just following the wrong rules.  Standard networking advice fails you, so you assume you fail at networking. Plus you hate it.  What is networking?

Doctors, Detectives, Educators and Executives Top “Jobs” of Emmy Nominees

If the Emmy Awards are any indicator, high school staff, police investigators and business owners/executives lead the most interesting lives — or at the least the lives that make for good TV. Out of the 24 actors nominated for an Emmy award for lead actor or actress in a television series: Four of their characters work in public high schools, four work as investigators for a police department and four are business owners or executives.

But that’s not where the similarities stop.  

Three of the characters who garnered Emmy noms for their respective actors work in health care, two are comedy writers, two are mid-level managers and two are lawyers — for a grand total of 20 out of 24 characters that share an occupation with at least one other Emmy-nominated character.

With all the different careers paths out there (the Bureau of Labor Statistics  lists 280 different occupations in its Occupation Outlook Handbook), that’s got to say something about our entertainment — or occupational — preferences. 

Below, a list of Emmy-nominated characters that are also professional peers.

The high school staff:

• “Glee”’s Matthew Morrison as Will Schuester, Spanish teacher and glee club director, William McKinley High School
• “Breaking Bad”’s Bryan Cranston as Walter White, high school chemistry teacher
• “Friday Night Lights”’ Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor, coach, Dillon High School football team
• “Friday Night Lights”’ Connie Britton as Tami Taylor, guidance counselor, East Dillon High School

The investigators:

• “Monk”’s Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk, police homicide consultant, San Francisco Police Department
• “Dexter”’s Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, blood spatter analyst, homicide unit, Miami metro police department
• “The Closer”’s Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Johnson, deputy chief, Major Crimes Division, LAPD
• “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”’s Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson, detective, Manhattan Special Victims Unit

The business execs:

• “30 Rock”’s Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy, vice president of East Coast television and microwave programming, GE
• “Mad Men”’s Jon Hamm as Don Draper, partner, advertising firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Price
• “The New Adventures Of Old Christine”’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Christine Campbell, owner, women’s health club
• “Damages”’ Glenn Close as Patty Hewes, partner, Hewes and Associates LLP

The health-care workers:

• “House”’s Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House, doctor and chief of diagnostic medicine, Princeton‑Plainsboro Teaching Hospital
• “Lost”’s Matthew Fox as Jack Shephard, doctor
• “Nurse Jackie”’s Edie Falco as Jackie Peyton, nurse, All Saints’ Hospital

The comedy writers:

• “Curb Your Enthusiasm”’s Larry David as himself (a comedy writer)
• “30 Rock”’s Tina Fey as Liz Lemon, head writer, sketch comedy show 

The mid-level managers:

• “The Office”’s Steve Carell as Michael Scott, regional manager, Dunder Mifflin Paper Company Inc. (A division of Sabre)
• “Parks And Recreation”’s Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, director of the Pawnee (Ind.) Department of Parks and Recreation

The lawyers:

• “Damages”’ Glenn Close as Patty Hewes, lawyer(also partner), Hewes and Associates LLP
• “The Good Wife”’s Julianna Margulies as Alicia Florrick, lawyer

The others:

• “The Big Bang Theory”’s Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, theoretical physicist
• “Glee”’s Lea Michele as Rachel Berry, student
• “United States Of Tara’’s Toni Collette as Tara Gregson, mural painter
• “Mad Men”’s January Jones as Betty Draper, housewife

Who will take home Sunday’s awards? Let us know your favorites in the comments section!

For more on work and the entertainment industry, check out:

When Celebrities Decide to Un-retire

The 10 Worst Movie Jobs

Back to Work at Sterling Cooper

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Is Going Back to School the Right Move?

Education has become something of a go-to during the Great Recession. Millions of workers have lost their jobs since the end of 2007, and suddenly the job market was filled with education, experienced workers who were usually sought after. Skilled professionals with a decade or more of experience found themselves competing against younger, less experienced professionals who had a better grasp of new and emerging technology and trends. Heading back to the classroom quickly became an attractive – and in some cases necessary – step toward finding a job.

In a recent New York Times article, Steven Greenhouse takes a look at professionals returning to school and their reasons. As you might expect, many workers want to refresh their skills and catch up on the changes that occurred since they graduated. For the unemployed, closing a gap in skill levels is their best chance to get their résumés on the top of the stack. For employed workers, it’s a way to advance in the company and stay ahead of job seekers applying for jobs.

Greenhouse explains:

“Some people have worked at a prosperous company for five years and are eager to move up, or are unemployed and eager to reinvent themselves. Still others are in an industry where successive waves of downsizing have made job security seem shaky. And more of them are concluding that if there is an answer to their problems, it’s more education.”

Returning to school is not as simple as deciding to get any degree or take a few courses and see the job offers and higher salaries pour in. Continuing education students can earn a degree, earn a certification or take only the classes that interest them. The important thing, as Greenhouse notes, is to know what you want and to find and program that gives you the proper guidance. Not every industry is the same, much less every employer. A second master’s degree won’t give every person a boost, and in the end you could end up losing plenty of time and money.

“Any good continuing education program, [dean of the University of Minnesota’s college of continuing education Mary Nichols] said, takes an individualized approach to its students. ‘We’re not in the business of steering people toward things,” she said. “We’re in the business of helping people capitalize on their strengths and put together ways to build on their interests and passions.’

“Cathy A. Sandeen, dean of continuing education at U.C.L.A., suggested, ‘Look at trends in your field. Look at your current skills and what do you need to augment your skills to make you more relevant and more attractive in your field.’”

Greenhouse, Nichols and Sandeen make a good point that many job seekers forget. Education is a serious commitment, and unless you have plenty of time and money at your disposal, returning to school comes with tradeoffs. The time you’ll spending going to class (online or on site), studying and researching means less time with your significant other, family or DVR.

And you’ll need to pay for this schooling, which might be a difficult feat if you’re unemployed. If you are employed, perhaps your employer has a continuing education benefit that covers some or all of the cost. Either way, crunch the numbers, consult the financial aid department and look for grants and scholarships. Education is an investment, yes, but you want to be certain you’ll recover the cost of that investment.

For one of the interviewees in Greenhouse’s article, the cost was less damaging than not returning to school.

“Mr. Torres, who had been laid off from his job as a senior database marketing analyst at Scholastic, said that before taking the course, he had been getting many job interviews.

“’They kept asking me whether I had any Web analysis experience, any experience in search engine marketing, search engine optimization or mobile marketing,’ he said. ‘I had to say no, and that hurt my chances.’”

Fortunately, the time and effort paid off with a new job.

Judging from your responses to a recent post asking what reasons you’ve heard for not getting a job, education is a common response. Have you returned to school, taken online courses, earned a certification or mulled over any other education options recently? Let us know what you’ve done and what worked (and didn’t work) for you.

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Update to the Comments Format

We wanted to let you know that we have modified the comments section so that you can now reply to a specific comment. You will then see a particular conversation in a threaded format. Hopefully this makes it easier for everyone to read and discuss posts.

Here is an example of what a threaded conversation looks like, care of the WordPress blog:

In the previous format, all comments were posted one after the other, with no indent, so that you weren’t always sure what a reader was replying to. Now, to reply to a specific comment, you  just hit the reply button next to it and enter your message. It will appear nested beneath the original comment.

If you want to leave a general comment not directed at a specific commenter, then you can simply enter your text in the reply box at the bottom of the page as always.

So now that commenting on posts (whether you love them or hate them) is easier, get to it! Use that Reply button. We love to hear from you.

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Workplace Fatalities Reach Record Low

Another silver lining in the unemployment cloud: Workplace fatalities have declined during the recession. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, incidences of workplace fatalities were 17 percent fewer in 2009 than in 2008. The 4,340 fatal workplace injuries reported for ’09 is the lowest number on record since the BLS started keeping track in 1992.

While a large part of that has to do with the fact that there were fewer jobs in general, the BLS reported that injuries per 100,000 workers declined from 3.7 in 2008, to 3.3 in 2009.  Bloomberg also reported that, according to the National Council of Compensation Insurance, workplace injuries have been on the decline for 10 years, reflecting an overall trend toward safer workplaces.

Transportation accidents, which account for almost two-fifths of all fatal workplace injuries also declined by 21 percent in 2009; though an overall loss of jobs in the construction industry plays a large part in the decline of these injuries.

As a response to the BLS numbers, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement: “A single worker hurt or killed on the job is one too many. While a decrease in the number of fatal work injuries is encouraging, we cannot and will not relent from our continued strong enforcement of workplace safety laws. As the economy regains strength and more people re-enter the workforce, the Department of Labor will remain vigilant to ensure America’s workers are kept safe while they earn a paycheck.”

We agree that even one accident is too many, so here are a few tips for staying safe on the job.

1. Pay attention to overtime hours - Staying late is bad for your health in more ways than one.  One recent study reported that employees who work more than 10 hours per day and 60 percent more likely to develop heart disease.  A long day also makes your commute more hazardous. You’re more likely to get in an accident when you’re tired — in fact, research has shown that drowsy drivers are seven times more likely to crash.

2.  Talk to your boss if your job is taking a physical toll on you - Jobs that are physically demanding may start to wear on workers after a while — especially those that involve repetitive motion, awkward body positioning or heavy lifting.  Companies are required by law to provide workers with a safe work environment, and your boss can help you figure out a safer or more comfortable situation.

3. The same goes for workplace injuries - If you are injured on the job, speak up. Your company will either have to provide you with time off to recuperate, or with a new set of job duties that will not exacerbate the injury.

4. Take breaks -If your job is physically demanding or requires you to operate heavy machinery, working while tired can also pose safety risks. Like driving while tired, doing physically demanding work, like construction, maintenance or manufacturing, can be seriously dangerous to tired workers. Take short, frequent breaks to keep your attention levels high and your drowsiness levels low.

For more on workplace issues, see:

Caution: Toxic Co-Workers Ahead

A Trying Economy Means Healthier Habits For Some Workers

Weight Gain at Work

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