Labor Market

"For Grads, Finding Work Is a Tough Job" (May 25) implied that some college graduates have resorted to unpaid internships after failing to secure paid employment. The piece could have used a comment about the legality of this practice. The entertainment industry is especially flagrant in using unpaid men and women under the guise of internships. They are nonstudents performing work without compensation and benefits. Both the intern and paid employees are victimized, while businesses profit from free labor.

California’s jobs engine sputtered in April as employers trimmed their payrolls, breaking a streak of eight consecutive months of employment growth. Employers shed 4,200 jobs, according to figures released Friday from the state's Employment Development Department. The unemployment rate dipped last month to 10.9% from 11% in March, but only because discouraged workers  departed the labor force.

Workers aren't the only ones uneasy about their future amid the upheaval in the American job market. Many employers also live in fear--although, in their case, the worries are about whether they can keep finding staffers with prized technology-related skills. In an unprecedented effort to deal with the employment insecurities among workers and companies alike, 10 high-profile corporations have teamed up to form a nonprofit consortium, the Talent Alliance.

California's unemployment rate will remain elevated for the next couple of years, according to a new UCLA forecast, and in some parts of the state won't return to pre-recession levels until 2016. Still, the state's labor market is on the mend and is likely to heal faster than the nation as a whole, economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast said Wednesday. California's jobless rate, which was 10.9% last month, is expected to fall to 7.7% by the end of 2014, just slightly above the U.S. average, the forecast said.

Three more pieces of economic data released Thursday all suggested that U.S. economic growth is slowing and that the nation's extremely tight labor markets, a keen concern of Federal Reserve officials, may be loosening up a bit. With other recent figures also pointing to some slowing in what had been a very rapid rate of growth, Fed policymakers on Wednesday chose to leave the target for overnight interest rates unchanged at 6.5%.

California's unemployment rate will remain elevated for the next couple of years, according to a new UCLA forecast, and in some parts of the state won't return to pre-recession levels until 2016. Still, the state's labor market is on the mend and is likely to heal faster than the nation as a whole, economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast said Wednesday. California's jobless rate, which was 10.9% last month, is expected to fall to 7.7% by the end of 2014, just slightly above the U.S. average, the forecast said.

The manufacturing sector showed further signs of stabilization this month, with a key index rising to its highest level in nearly two years. But an unexpected bump in first-time jobless claims last week offered fresh evidence that a turnaround in the labor market is still a long way off. Businesses have been trying to catch up to falling demand by slashing inventories and cutting jobs. Now they need to restock and that is helping to slow the decline in manufacturing, although not to the point where it is adding jobs.

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose in mid-December, the government said Thursday in a report seen as further illustrating the slow pace of the economic recovery. "The data reinforces the point that the improvement in the labor market will be gradual," said Marilyn Schaja, an economist with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp. in New York. New applications for unemployment insurance were up 12,000, to 360,000, during the week ended Dec.

There is good news for folks planning to hit their bosses up for a raise: With the labor market tightening as unemployment remains low, employers may be willing to pay more to keep the employees they have. The bad news, though, is that employees will still have to merit a raise and then build a solid case for why they should get one. With that proviso, there are strategies to follow to improve your chances of winning a pay increase, say human resource managers, consultants and headhunters.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, worried that recent labor market improvements could fizzle because of weak economic growth, signaled that he was poised to keep interest rates at their super-low levels and stick with the central bank's easy-money policy for some time. Though the labor market and the economy have improved in recent months, he stressed in a speech Monday that labor-market conditions were "far from normal," noting that the number of people working is well below pre-recession levels, as is the total number of hours worked.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, worried that recent labor market improvements could fizzle because of weak economic growth, signaled that he was poised to keep interest rates at their super-low levels and stick with the central bank's easy-money policy for some time. Though the labor market and the economy have improved in recent months, he stressed in a speech Monday that labor-market conditions were "far from normal," noting that the number of people working is well below pre-recession levels, as is the total number of hours worked.

Despite the recent pickup in job gains, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke offered a cautious assessment of the labor market and suggested that he would press the Fed to continue or expand the central bank's easy-money policies to ensure further improvements in the unemployment rate.   In a speech Monday at an economics conference, Bernanke maintained that conditions in the job market remain "far from normal," with total hours of work and the number of people working still well below pre-recession levels.

With the economy the most important issue in the presidential campaign, it was no surprise that President Obama's Republican opponents tried to take some of the shine off Friday's surprisingly bright jobs report.  The Labor Department report said that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January, the most in nine months, and that the unemployment rate dropped to a three-year low of 8.3%. But former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, fresh from his big win Saturday in the Nevada caucuses, told a throng of supporters that the jobless rate has now been above Obama's own "red line of 8%" for 36 months.

California's unemployment rate dropped in November to 11.3%, the fourth straight month of decline and a sign that the state's labor market continues its slow recovery. November's jobless rate fell sharply from the 11.7% rate posted in October, according to data released Friday by the Employment Development Department, even though California employers added a modest 6,600 workers to their payrolls last month. Analysts said a sharp upward revision in the number of payroll jobs added in October helped.

The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week, only partially reversing a sharp decline two weeks ago, according to U.S. data released Thursday. Initial jobless claims in the week ended Oct. 1 climbed by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 401,000, the Labor Department said. The increase was smaller than expected. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected applications to rise to 410,000. Claims in the week ended Sept. 24 fell 33,000 to 395,000, revised from an initial estimate of a drop of 37,000.

Economists have predicted that California's labor market recovery would be slow. A new UCLA forecast projects that it could take even longer than previously thought. The state's unemployment rate will remain in double digits until early 2013, according to a report slated for release Wednesday by UCLA's Anderson School of Management . That's three months later than the university's economists forecast in December, as California's weak housing market continues to weigh on the region's recovery.

California employers added 32,500 to their payrolls in January, a sign that the state's moribund labor market might finally be stirring to life. The gains came as sectors throughout the economy, including construction and manufacturing, started to hire workers, according to numbers released Friday by the Employment Development Department. The state's unemployment rate increased slight to 12.5% in January, up from a revised 12.3% the previous month, as formerly discouraged workers who had dropped out of the labor force began job-hunting again.

Like a breath of spring air hinting at better days ahead, a government report Friday showed the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the most in three years. Though encouraging, the boost wasn't enough to lower the unemployment rate. It remained stuck at 9.7% for a third straight month as job seekers surged back into the labor market, lured by signs of the country's recovery from the worst economic crisis in more than half a century. Economists were generally cautious in assessing the employment gain.

New applications for unemployment insurance benefits fell below the 400,000 level last week, according to government data released Thursday, a sign of a strengthening employment environment. Initial claims for these benefits fell 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 383,000 in the week ended Feb. 5, hitting the lowest seen since July 2008, the Labor Department reported. Economists looking at the health of the job market say that claims would have to remain below the 400,000 level before there's a substantial gain in hiring.

Three years after the onset of the Great Recession, signs are mounting that employers might at last be starting to hire new workers. The Labor Department reported Thursday that new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly dropped below 400,000 last week for the first time since mid-2008, and economists called it a hopeful sign that the jobless rate, stuck near 10% for more than a year, might soon begin to fall. The weather and the holiday period may have exaggerated the improvement in what can be volatile numbers.