Employment

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits dropped last week to 406,000, a new pandemic low and more evidence that the job market is strengthening as the virus wanes and economy further reopens. Thursday's report from the... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s push to tackle several crises at once has reenergized the push for green jobs or those jobs which contribute to preserving or restoring the environment, including those in traditional sectors, like manufacturing.  His American Jobs... Read More

The transition to remote work this past year happened a lot more quickly than many expected, which suggests organizations were “already working in a digital environment, we just had not realized it,” said Tatyana Mamut, senior vice president of new... Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. restaurants and stores are rapidly raising pay in an urgent effort to attract more applicants and keep up with a flood of customers as the pandemic eases. McDonald's, Sheetz and Chipotle  are just some of the... Read More

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research contends that working from home may be here to stay after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. The paper — authored jointly by Steven Davis of the... Read More

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced Tuesday he is ending participation in all federal pandemic-related unemployment insurance programs to address workforce shortages across the state. Parson, a Republican, said they will end at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, June 12. "From conversations... Read More

STOWE, Vt. (AP) — Eduardo Rovetto is hoping the state of Vermont's reinstated requirement that people who are collecting unemployment benefits must seek work to qualify will help him hire enough staff for his restaurant in the resort town of... Read More

With the US unemployment rate essentially unchanged from March to April from 6.0% to 6.1% respectively, the American state of employment seems to continue on its positive track, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics latest report.  Employment in nonfarm... Read More

WASHINGTON - By late 2020 over 2800 formal Equal Employment Opportunity complaints of discrimination - by race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and more - were submitted to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The fact that there are that... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration’s pledge to up the wages and fair labor standards of low-income workers hit a roadblock among Republicans during a congressional hearing Monday. The intentions are good but the economics are bad, according to critics who... Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to sign an executive order to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.Biden administration officials said ahead of... Read More

BOSTON (AP) — The owner of seafood restaurants on Cape Cod has eliminated lunch service and delayed the opening of some locations because his summertime influx of foreign workers hasn't arrived yet.  More than a thousand miles away, a Jamaican... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Protecting the Right to Organize Act is a landmark labor rights bill that could transform the way the United States classifies workers. The PRO Act is intended to modernize the National Labor Relations Act but is controversial,... Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to 576,000, a post-COVID low and a hopeful sign that layoffs are easing as the economy recovers from the pandemic recession.  The Labor Department said Thursday... Read More

Amazon appears to have enough votes to thwart an effort to unionize its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.  By Friday afternoon, the company had crossed the threshold to secure a majority of votes, with 1,700 warehouse workers voting against the union... Read More

When James Reidy worked at the Labor Department in the 1980s, processing worker compensation claims from asbestos exposure in shipyards, he found that many of the cases stalled over the question of causation. The workers had been exposed to asbestos... Read More

WASHINGTON - With 7.4 million job openings and 5.7 million new hires across the U.S. in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover report paints a brighter picture for the country’s employment situation more than a... Read More

The U.S. added a solid 916,000 jobs last month -- far surpassing an expected increase of 675,000 jobs -- and the unemployment rate fell to 6 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday. The new numbers come after the economy added... Read More

SAN DIEGO – The past four days, hundreds of keynote speakers in academia, biotech, and pharma virtually gathered for the Festival of Biologics.   Unlike other years, many of the top-producers in the biopharma and life sciences industries discussed how work... Read More

WASHINGTON - If 94% of individuals completing a Registered Apprenticeship program through the Department of Labor are retained by their employers, U.S. Navy Officer Michael Pruitt asked yesterday, why are there not more veterans or transitioning military service members taking... Read More

WASHINGTON - AARP has endorsed bipartisan legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would strengthen protections against age discrimination in the workplace. The Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act is intended to reverse a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision... Read More

DALLAS — Texas’ Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled Thursday in favor of a former Tarrant County College District employee who claimed she was fired from her job after disclosing her sexual orientation to a supervisor. Amanda Sims alleged in... Read More

WASHINGTON — Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough quashed Democrats’ plans to add a $15 per hour federal minimum wage increase to President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, but some members are not giving up. Democrats are planning to pass the... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Department of Labor’s apprenticeship programs benefit individuals seeking to master skills while gainfully employed, and provides employers with the talent needed to fill the current workforce shortage, according to two Congressmen yesterday. Apprenticeships differ from paid internships... Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell sharply last week but remained high by historical standards.  Applications for benefits declined 111,000 from the previous week to a seasonally adjusted 730,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced he's picked Kiran Ahuja to be his director of the Office of Personnel Management. If confirmed, Ahuja would be the first South Asian and first Asian American woman to lead the agency.... Read More

WASHINGTON -- A congressional subcommittee tried to assess the well-being and mental health of its own workforce Thursday after a year that one of its members described as “like drinking from a firehose while in freefall.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-N.Y.,... Read More

The National Restaurant Association is urging Congress not to increase the federal minimum wage as part of President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. The association said in a letter sent to congressional leaders Tuesday that fast-tracking a minimum... Read More

As panicked Americans cleared supermarkets of toilet paper and food last spring, grocery employees gained recognition as among the most indispensable of the pandemic's front-line workers.A year later, most of those workers are waiting their turn to receive COVID-19 vaccines,... Read More

WASHINGTON – This week, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., Mark Warner, D-Va., Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Bob Casey, D-Pa., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., introduced the bipartisan, bicameral COVID-19 Mine Worker Protection... Read More