The Work Buzz

This morning the BLS reported employment rose by 290,000 in April, surpassing economists’ predictions of 185,000. Since December, nonfarm payroll employment has expanded by 573,000, with 483,000 jobs added in the private sector.

In an additional bit of good news, the BLS revised the numbers from February and March: February was revised from -14,000 to +39,000, and the change for March was revised from +162,000 to +230,000. Continue reading

College senior Kaitlin Ripple has always known the business world was competitive. Yet when she started Baldwin-Wallace College, located in a suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio, she had no way of knowing how cutthroat it would be when she finally received her diploma. Continue reading

When you look at Forbes magazine’s most recent list of highest-paid CEOs (chief executives of the 500 biggest companies in the United States), you won’t see a woman until No. 48: Irene B. Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods.  In a country where women make up 47 percent of the  work force, just 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are female. Continue reading

This spring there seems to have been an explosion of positive employment news that’s left skeptics wondering, “Is this news too good to be true?” and job seekers crying foul.

While we are not out of the woods yet, President Barack Obama was cautiously optimistic in a recent radio address. Continue reading

On Wednesday, I wrote a post about everyone’s favorite time of year: tax season.

Today, I bring you a guest blog about tax tips for freelancers. Joseph D’Agnese & Denise Kiernan, authors of “The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed,” tell freelancers that they can have a stress-free tax season (now and in the future). Continue reading

Tax season can be, well, taxing to say the least, and this year it might be more so on many Americans who are unemployed, have seen their incomes shrink or are hoping for a sizable return to pay off bills.

For cash-strapped workers, a tax return can be a much-needed income boost. Continue reading

In an age of Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare, we’ve gotten used to broadcasting any and all information about ourselves. But when it comes to your résumé, it might be best to take a cue from architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who coined the phrase, “Less is more.”

Today’s guest blogger, Catherine Jewell, tells job seekers to follow this advice when writing their résumés. Continue reading

We’re not out of the woods yet, but Americans got some good news this morning regarding employment.

The BLS reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 162,000 in March, and the unemployment rate was 9.7 percent for the third month in a row. Continue reading

What happens when you make a verbal blunder at work? Can you recover? Should you apologize? Should you even acknowledge it? It all depends on what you say, whom you say it to and who overhears it, says Joseph Grenny, co-author of “Crucial Conversations.”

“It doesn’t just happen to news correspondents or politicians,” Grenny says. Continue reading

Who invented the standard nine-to-five workday? He or she must have been a morning person because if I were setting the workday hours, I’d push it to start at 10 a.m. at the earliest. Why?

While I’d love to be the type of person who just jumps out of bed alert and perky every day, it just doesn’t work for me that way. Continue reading