Associated Press | A Chicago hospital is ending a salary freeze
with a big thaw. Swedish Covenant Hospital froze salaries to save jobs
last year. At the same time, the hospital promised employees to give
their money back if they helped the institution meet its financial
goals.
Filed under: Jobs/employment
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Chicago hospital ends salary freeze with bonus
UIC: Wage theft rampant in Cook County
Associated Press | A University of Illinois at Chicago study shows wage theft among low
income workers is widespread in Cook County, the nation’s second most populous
county. Wage theft has long been a problem. It means employers aren’t paying
minimum wage or overtime, among other things. Experts say illegal
immigrants, women and minorities are particularly susceptible.
Ten Illinois employers make big job cuts
By Becky Yerak | Ten Illinois employers — from a mortgage provider to retailers to a greeting card maker — initiated nearly 1,300 job cuts in March, according to newly filed records at the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
The companies include Pan American Mortgage LLC in Chicago, which cut 443 workers; Redbox Automated Retail LLC, Downers Grove, which cut 187, and Durham School Services, a bus service provider in Belvidere. Durham said it’s cutting 153 workers because it lost a contract.
Ad agency DDB Chicago lets go 15-20 staffers
From Media Bistro | Sources are saying that ad agency DDB Chicago has laid off 15-20 staffers “across the board.”
Get the full story: mediabistro.com.
Retailers, manufacturers adding more jobs
Associated Press | Job openings rose in several sectors of the
U.S. economy in February, including retail, manufacturing,
transportation, restaurants and hotels, the Labor Department said
Tuesday. The report is consistent with other surveys showing hiring is
picking up in those areas. It also echoes last week’s national
employment report, which showed broad job gains in March.
Job news pushes up bond market interest rates
Associated Press | The biggest increase in jobs in three years pushed interest rates in the bond market to their highest level since before the worst days of the credit crisis in 2008.
With the stock market closed for Good Friday, investors had a shortened day of trading in the bond market to react to the Labor Department’s report that employers added the most jobs in March since before the recession began in December 2007.
Treasury prices fell after the report, sending their yields higher. Bond prices tend to fall as investors’ confidence grows and demand for safe-haven investments wanes.
Obama says U.S. economy ‘turning the corner’
President Barack Obama speaking at Celgard, an advanced battery technology manufacturer. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
Associated Press | President Barack Obama on Friday hailed a new government report showing the most jobs created in nearly three years. “We are beginning to turn the corner,” he told employees of a manufacturing plant that received government stimulus money.
“We’ve broken this slide,” Obama said several hours after the Labor Department reported that businesses added 162,000 jobs to their payrolls in March. He said the new figures point the way toward “helping us climb out of this recession,” the deepest in 80 years.
Get the full story: Obama says U.S. economy “turning the corner.”
Caterpillar is among companies adding workers
From Bloomberg | Peoria-based Caterpillar Inc. is among companies adding staff, indicating that the economic recovery that began in the second half of 2009 is starting to produce the jobs needed to lift consumer spending and sustain the expansion. Still, unemployment may be slow to recede as more people enter the job market, giving the Federal Reserve scope to hold its benchmark interest rate near zero in coming months.
Get the full story: businessweek.com.
162K jobs added in March, most in 3 years
Juan Padilla, left, a district manager at Frito Lay, talks with job seeker William Garcia during the National Society for Hispanic Professionals Chicago bilingual job fair at Navy Pier in mid-March. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
By Don Lee | The American economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest burst of
hiring in three years, the Labor Department said Friday. The
unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent, the level it has been for
the last three months.
The March job gains, which were boosted by temporary hiring for the
census, marked the biggest one-month increase since 239,000 jobs were
generated in March 2007. The latest gain was slightly lower than what
many economists had been forecasting, but the government also revised
up the count of payrolls for the first two months of the year.
Chicago unemployment stands at 11.3%
From Crain’s Chicago Business | The Chicago-Joliet-Naperville area employed 137,500 fewer people in February 2010 than a year earlier, and February unemployment in the Chicago area stood at 11.3%, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
Get the full story: chicagobusiness.com.
County employment numbers see a decline
By Julie Wernau | Employment declined in 329 of the 334 largest U.S. counties over the one-year time period beginning in September 2008, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Elkhart County, Ind., about 100 miles east of Chicago, saw the largest percentage decline, losing 14.5 percent over the year.
Nationally, jobs decreased 5.3 percent over that time period with an average weekly wage of $840 per week.
Geithner: Jobless rate to stay ‘unacceptably high’
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, right, looks at an armored driver enclosure for the U.S. Army’s Stryker vehicle yesterday in Washington, Pa. (AP Photo/Post-Gazette, Bob Donaldson)
Associated Press | Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday it’s “deeply unfair”
that some financial institutions that got taxpayer-paid bailouts are
emerging in better shape from the recession than millions of ordinary
Americans.
He acknowledged public outrage over that and said people watched with
disdain as Washington protected high-risk banks and investment houses,
even as the national unemployment rate was soaring to double-digit
levels for the first time in a generation.
MarksJarvis: No jobs show up in ADP report
By Gail MarksJarvis | Where, oh where, will the jobs come from? Optimistic investors and economists promised jobs would be materializing by now. But instead, 23,000 more private sector jobs evaporated.
The figures released today in the so-called ADP report “call into question the growing presumption that private-sector firms have turned the corner from job shedding to net hiring,” said Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius.
Get the full story: MarksJarvis on Money.
Abbott cut about 175 sales rep jobs in March
Dow Jones Newswires | Abbott Laboratories cut about 175 U.S. pharmaceutical sales representative positions earlier in March while shifting resources in the business, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday.
The Abbott Park, Ill., company has about 83,000 employees worldwide.
Online job boards hint at growth in Illinois
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
By Julie Wernau | Illinois is among the few states to post large gains in March for job vacancies advertised online, according to The Conference Board, a global, independent business membership and research association.
June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board, said the upturn in demand over the last five months – with a 647,000 increase in positions advertised online over that period — pointed to a recovering labor market but that February and March’s data is showing a modest decline in those numbers, which could be an indication that employers are still somewhat cautious about hiring.
