"In the last two months, involuntary part-time employment has increased by 738,000. See Table A-8. This implies that either (1) more people who were already employed have been reduced to part-time status or (2) part-time positions are being added to payrolls."

"The blue line is the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more. The red line is the same data as a percent of the civilian workforce.

According to the BLS, there are a record 6.31 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks (and still want a job). This is a record 4.1% of the civilian workforce. (note: records started in 1948)."

"NPR has a nice graphic for where job growth will occur in the next decade based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics data (the NPR site is much cooler than the graphic above). Now, operations research is a little small to appear as a dot on its own, but if you look at that little dot far to the right, showing the most job growth? That is “Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services”. And what field is all of “management, scientific and technical”? Operations Research, of course! The projection is for 82.8% growth."

"Last month 52,000 temps were added, greater than the number of new workers in any other category. Not even health care and government, stalwarts through the long recession, did better.

“Sometimes we’re asked by a company to bring back ex-employees as temps,” said Joanie Ruge, a senior vice president of Adecco. Some are even ex-employees who have been laid off. “That does happen,” she said."

"Think back to the dot-com era, when venture capitalists were spending all their money laying fiber-optic cable under the street. The right solution wasn’t for the Fed to raise interest rates until even punch-drunk venture capitalists could realize all this investment in fiber wouldn’t be profitable. The right solution was to take their money away. Give it to the poor, who will spend it on something useful, like food and clothing.

So those are Keynes’ prescriptions for a successful economy: low interest rates, government investment, and redistribution to the poor. And, for a time — from around the 1940s to the 1970s — that’s kind of what we did. The results were magical: the economy grew strongly, inequality fell away, everyone had jobs."

"Also unlike traditional unions, the Freelancers Union does not negotiate salaries or organize strikes. It does, however, work with politicians to win better protections for free agents. A recent advocacy triumph for the Freelancers Union came on March 23, 2009, when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would seek a new federal unemployment benefit for freelancers, who make up 15 percent of New York City’s workforce. The Freelancers Union designed the proposed Unemployment Protection Fund, which would require the federal or state governments to match $300 for every $1,000 a Freelancers Union member voluntarily pays into a designated fund. Members could draw upon these funds to pay for college tuition, housing, education, or other needs in case of unemployment."

"What’s the gap between dreams being fantasy and reality? Obviously, it’s a matter of action. But, what makes the free man take action where the cubicle citizen recoils? This is the question that has been burning in my mind for some time. This mindset makes the difference between success and near certain failure."

"When occupations contract, the average age of workers in those occupations tends to rise, Autor says. "Young people don't want to stake their futures in shrinking fields. Meanwhile, older workers have an incentive to stick around as they have skills and knowledge specific to these jobs.""

"Nonemployer Statistics originate from tax return information of the Internal Revenue Service. The data are subject to nonsampling error such as errors of self-classification by industry on tax forms, as well as errors of response, nonreporting and coverage. Values provided by each firm are slightly modified to protect the respondent's confidentiality. For further information about methodology and data limitations, see Survey Methodology. For descriptions of column headings and rows (industries), click on the appropriate underlined element in the table."

'And it's fundamentally degrading, as an applicant, to have your motives questioned. How do you respond to “I'm just not sure you'd be happy here.”? Especially if part of you agrees?'