We Should Help Prison Inmates Become Entrepreneurs Upon Their Release

Jeff Smith was once an up-and-coming star in the Missouri State Senate. He went to prison for a year for covering up an election law violation. Since his release, he’s created a new space for himself as a professor, writer, political commentator and advocate for those he was locked up with.

But what Jeff discovered inside wasn’t what he expected — he saw in his fellow inmates boundless ingenuity and business savvy. He asks: Why don’t we tap this entrepreneurial potential to help ex-prisoners contribute to society once they’re back outside? Continue Reading

118,000 New Private Sector Jobs in November Would Have Been 204,000 If Not For Hurricane Sandy

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics

Private sector employment increased by 118,000 jobs from October to November, according to the November ADP National Employment Report®, which is produced by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP®), a leading provider of human capital management solutions, in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics. The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The October 2012 report, which reported job gains of 158,000, was revised down by 1,000 to 157,000 jobs.

Goods-producing employment rose by 4,000 jobs in November as gains in construction jobs of 23,000 more than offset the 16,000 decline in manufacturing employment. Continue Reading

Lessons Learned by Employers Impacted by Hurricane Sandy

Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

By Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

Four weeks after Sandy, life is getting back to normal – or is it? Walking the dog around a relatively unscathed block of homes in central NJ (miles from the shore), reminders are everywhere. Tons of debris in front of every home (more than 40 homes); the noise of still more 75-foot oak trees being cut while leaning precariously over homes rends the air; blue tarps draped over roofs (5 homes) that were speared with limbs weighing tons; and a flatbed truck finally easing up behind a flattened neighbor’s car (where my 75 foot oak fell). I check to make sure he doesn’t accidentally take the new car next to it.

Sandy was a storm that has little comparison even to Katrina although we can take some comfort that lessons learned from that catastrophic event seven years ago were likely responsible for preparations last month that saved lives – response speed and pre-positioning among them. Continue Reading

Employment Prospects Improving for Military Veterans

Brent Rasmussen of Careerbuilder

Despite higher than average unemployment rates, employment prospects for U.S. military veterans may be improving.

According to a new CareerBuilder study, 29 percent of employers say they are actively recruiting veterans to work for their organizations, up 9 percentage points from a year ago. Twenty-two percent are planning on adding members of the National Guard to their headcount, up 8 percentage points. Sixty-five percent said they would be more likely to hire a veteran over another equally qualified candidate. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive^© of more than 2,600 employers nationwide from August 13 to September 6, 2012.

Where The Job Opportunities Are

Employers are looking to leverage the technical and leadership skills of military personnel, with 3 in 10 hoping to fill information technology positions with veterans. The most common areas for hiring U.S. service men and women are: Continue Reading

Should Unemployed Veterans Be Deployed for Hurricane Sandy Relief?

After months or years fighting overseas, 92 percent of American veterans say they want to continue their service; meanwhile, one after another, natural disasters continue to wreak havoc worldwide. What do these two challenges have in common? Team Rubicon co-founder Jake Wood gives a moving talk on how veterans can effectively contribute to disaster relief responses — and in the process, regain purpose, community and self-worth. Continue Reading

Top 4 Industries for Those With Associate’s Degrees

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

According to a recent survey of nearly 5,000 associate degree students, the overall top industries for this student group to begin their careers were government, human services, social services, and then education.

“The interest in government as a career option is particularly noteworthy,” writes NACE’s director of strategic and Foundation research Ed Koc. “However, when one considers the large percentage of associate degree students who are majoring in healthcare and social work [a combined 36 percent] and those who intend to pursue a bachelor’s degree in education, the result is less surprising.” Continue Reading

Despite GOP and Fox News Claims to Contrary, 7.8% Unemployment is Real

First it was Fox News. Then it was former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch. Then it was former and current windbag Donald Trump. I was disappointed but hardly surprised when those conspiracy theorists and die hard Republican supporters accused the Obama Administration and Bureau of Labor Statistics of falsifying last Friday’s employment reports. Sometimes the truth hurts, even when the truth is that almost 900,000 more Americans are working now than a month ago and that fact should be celebrated. But I was surprised to see someone that I have a lot of respect for — former Chief Operating Officer of the Society for Human Resource Management China Gorman — join the naysayers. Say it ain’t so, China. Say it ain’t so.

Without producing a shred of any evidence — even questionable evidence — to the contrary, conspiracy theorists and GOP supporters across the conservative media outlets have slandered the ethics of the non-political appointee economists who compile and publish the monthly jobs reports for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These conspiracy theorists were apparently disappointed to learn that almost 900,000 more Americans are working today than a month ago and that more Americans are now working than were when President Obama took office. That disappointment — thinly veiled by many of them — is sickening. That almost 900,000 more Americans are working than a month ago and more Americans are working than when Obama took office undercuts their argument that only Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan can right the economy and the job market and that they will do so through the austerity measures which have devastated our state and local governments as well as the governments in Europe. Continue Reading

Is Michele Bachmann Correct That Obamacare Will Cause Millions of Lost Jobs?

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R) predictably was more than a little disappointed at yesterday’s ruling  by the U.S. Supreme Court that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (a/k/a Obamacare) was constitutional. Bachmann has consistently been one of the leading advocates against the law in general and its individual mandate in particular.

Although the law and its individual mandate were both initially formulated by her Republican Party and the right wing Heritage Foundation, Bachmann was quoted yesterday as saying, “Obamacare represents the largest expansion of entitlement spending and a playground of left-wing social engineering in our country’s history and must be stopped. Now, the only way to save the country from Obamacare’s budget-busting government takeover of health care is to completely repeal it. I disagree with the court’s ruling and expansion of government power under the commerce clause. Government should never have the right to tell Americans what they must purchase.” She continued, “Under President Obama’s signature legislation, health care costs continue to skyrocket, and up to 20 million Americans could lose their employer-based coverage.”

Although I could never see myself voting for Bachmann, I am willing to take her at her word when she says that she’s been told by many employers that they plan to stop providing health insurance coverage to their employees because they expect those costs to skyrocket under Obamacare. But let’s be realistic about which employers she’s talking with and their motivations for making those statements. Realistically, the bulk of the employers who are going to have access to Bachmann are going to be Republicans and philosophically opposed to Obamacare. Fair enough. But let’s also be realistic about the motivations which drive their business decisions. Most, I suspect, operate their businesses to maximize their profitability and that means keeping their best employees.

I’m not surprised that these Republican business owners believe that they will need to drop health insurance coverage given that the Court just announced that Obamacare is constitutional. But saying they’re going to drop health insurance coverage is a lot easier than actually dropping it when actually dropping it will mean that they will lose many of their best employees and will also be unable to recruit new ones. I have no doubt that some business owners will need to drop their coverage, some won’t need to but will choose to, some will need to layoff employees, and some will choose to layoff employees. But I also have no doubt that many business owners will now be able to afford to provide health insurance to their employees and that tens of millions of Americans will now be able to afford health insurance or obtain insurance which doesn’t exempt their pre-existing conditions. Many who are toiling away in jobs they hate simply to get health insurance will be liberated and many of those will start their own businesses, work as contractors, and otherwise find meaningful, rewarding work.

Business owners rarely make business decisions based upon their ideological beliefs. They may believe that Obamacare is a bad thing for the country and they may be proven correct. I doubt they will, but it could happen. But you can be sure that the vast majority of business owners will be rational when it comes to deciding weeks or months from now whether to drop their health insurance coverage or layoff employees. The vast majority won’t as eliminating coverage or employees will harm their profitability far more than any increased costs they may suffer under Obamacare. And for those business owners who drop coverage or employees because of their political beliefs and despite what they should know is best for their business, well, then they’ll be helping in another way. They’ll be helping by proving that Darwin was right.

Contrary to Media Reports, May Job Numbers Were Robust

Nonfarm payroll employment changed little in May (+69,000), and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a few days ago. Employment increased in health care, transportation and warehousing, and wholesale trade but declined in construction. Employment was little changed in most other major industries.

So overall, the growth in jobs was rather anemic as an increase of 69,000 jobs in a month is about half of what the country needs just to keep the same percentage of people employed because the number of people of working age increases by about 130,000 per month. But that’s just the high level view. When you really start looking at the numbers and turning off or out the talking heads on tv, the numbers actually look good (not great). The reason? The monthly increases in the number of people working are being greatly suppressed by layoffs in state and local government. Interesting how those who are advocating so strong for austerity in government are also the first to jump on the jobless numbers as proof that their policies are the way to economic bliss. But I digress. Continue Reading

Video Interview in U.K. Immediately After Keynote About U.S. Job Market for College Grads

Last week I had the good fortune to fly over to Leeds, England to keynote their annual Graduate Employment Conference. CEO of Graduates Yorkshire and Gradcore Martin Edmondson asked me to deliver a presentation about the U.S. job market for college and university students and recent graduates. Many of the issues we’re facing are similar to those they’re facing. They’re experiencing some of them before we do and we’re experiencing some before they do.

One issue that I knew was important but didn’t realize just how important it would be to them was the high cost of attending just about any type of post-secondary school. The cost of attending a higher education institution is far higher in the U.S. than it is in almost any other country and FAR higher than it is to attend an equivalent school in the United Kingdom. But their recent implementation of austerity measures threatens to put their schools on a similar path to that which our schools have long been on. Without exception, every attendee and organizer with whom I spoke greatly appreciated my urging that they do not follow our lead as we are making higher education impossible for many and soon, I fear, for most. As bad as that would have been decades ago, it is even worse moving forward as we cannot and should not hope to compete against other nations to see which can manufacture goods at the lowest possible cost. Unless we want our citizenry to again have third world standards of living, we need to ensure they have first world standards of work. And that means that we need a workforce which uses the muscles between their ears more than the muscles on their backs. Continue Reading