Ground Zero hardhats are hitting the hard stuff at lunch -- guzzling beers and shots at nearby bars before stumbling back to their dangerous jobs on the hallowed site, The New York Post has learned.

With cost overruns crossing the $2 billion mark and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, some reckless workers were seen on midday breaks last week filling their bellies with enough booze to become legally drunk.

The men then stumbled back to the site, where workers have reached the 78th floor of 1 World Trade Center as they attempt to build a virtually indestructible skyscraper.

Construction is now in a delicate phase that demands clear-headed concentration, with crews ascending to the upper floors of the 1,776-foot Tower 1 and 947-foot Tower 4 as part of a furious, round-the-clock schedule to complete four buildings, a transit hub and a memorial.

Ground Zero hardhats are hitting the hard stuff at lunch -- guzzling beers and shots at nearby bars before stumbling back to their dangerous jobs on the hallowed site, The Post has learned.

With cost overruns crossing the $2 billion mark and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, some reckless workers were seen on midday breaks last week filling their bellies with enough booze to become legally drunk.

The men then stumbled back to the site, where workers have reached the 78th floor of 1 World Trade Center as they attempt to build a virtually indestructible skyscraper.

How good is a government job? We all know that government workers get generous pensions, job security and health benefits.

Now a new USA Today analysis reports that it's almost impossible to lose a federal job.

Federal Employees who work at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, or more than a dozen other government agencies "are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired...."

Death is the "primary threat" to their job security.

The federal government fired only about one-half of one percent of its entire workforce last year. In the private sector, the percentage of workers who get fired for "poor performance" is 5 times higher.

How much do you get paid with that kind of job security?

Twice as much as private sector counterparts.

Give me a break.

Where did all the workers go?

The labor force — those who have a job or are looking for one — is getting smaller, even though the economy is growing and steadily adding jobs. That trend defies the rules of a normal economic recovery.

Nobody is sure why it's happening. Economists think some of the missing workers have retired, have entered college or are getting by on government disability checks. Others have probably just given up looking for work.

"A small work force means millions of discouraged workers, lower output in the future and a weak recovery," says Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Congress' Joint Economic Committee. "Those are unhealthy signs."

By the government's definition, if you quit looking, you're no longer counted as unemployed. And you're no longer part of the labor force.

Since November, the number of Americans counted as employed has grown by 765,000, to just shy of 139 million.

Federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents arrested 19 people, including eight workers at a Downtown construction site, suspected of being illegally in the United States in warrant-search raids yesterday at two separate locations.

In the two years since immigration reform legislation stalled in Congress, many states have passed their own laws targeting illegal immigrants. And soon Florida could join them. Legislators have filed six bills that would, among other things, penalize far

Why are Arizona business groups fighting so fiercely against the state's new employer-sanctions law due to go into effect Jan. 1? Is it because they are concerned that legal workers will accidentally be flagged as unauthorized or because they are concerne

Judge Bruce Q. Morin issued a preliminary order on Friday awarding workers’ compensation to Edgar Velasquez, the illegal Mexican immigrant who slashed his face to the bone with a chainsaw last year. The Workers’ Compensation judge ordered the owner of

Several airline employees and workers at Kennedy Airport were arrested yesterday on charges they were part of an international drug ring that brought hundreds of pounds of cocaine, heroin and other narcotics into the United States from the Dominican Repub

Two clerks at the Division of Motor Vehicles in Pawtucket have been charged by the state police in a wide-ranging scheme of falsifying dozens of Rhode Island driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and people involved in midlevel drug dealing. Dolores

Two men who crashed into and killed a Nederland teen while fleeing police after a string of robberies last year pleaded guilty Monday to their respective roles in the crimes.

Naples City Council today included language in city contracts that would prohibit contractors from hiring undocumented workers. The decision means all contracts on today’s consent agenda needed to be pulled and amended to include the new language. The v