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In discussing our unemployment problem today, WSJ's Real Time Economics points to an important issue: worker productivity. The piece explains that, with more productive workers supporting a growing population, the American employment rate and living standards are falling. Indeed, productivity has become a bad word in this economic downturn, but should it be? According to the WSJ: Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/06/06/are-more-productive-workers-bad-for-u-s-jobs/#ixzz1OhC7VTrK

The last 40 years have seen dramatic changes in the hours worked at jobs by full-time undergraduates -- with notable increases until 2000, and then a period of relative stability until a sharp drop in 2009, according to research (abstract available here) released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/17/study-explores-increases-and-declines-student-work-hours#ixzz1jjSJWQB8 Inside Higher Ed

"WASHINGTON-President Barack Obama's first official economic report to Congress predicts lackluster employment growth this year and next, even after including the impact of a jobs bill whose prospects appeared uncertain in the Senate."

"Later this year, a marketing manager will sit down for his first day of work at HomeAway, a company that helps people rent their vacation homes online. In the firm's sleek Austin, Texas, headquarters, a glass-wrapped building decorated with travel souvenirs, the marketer will flip on his computer and do his job - a job no one has done before. This, you see, will be a brand-new job, one of the most coveted commodities of economic recovery. "

"As the U.S. jobs market digs its way out of the recession, gains aren't expected to be evenly distributed. But some of the hardest-hit regions may also see some of the best growth, according to a new analysis."

"The economic and educational disadvantages of low-income black students who struggle to complete college are well-documented. While black students at elite universities don't necessarily fit into that category, a new book says they face social and institutional obstacles of their own - obstacles that ultimately drive them away from the high-status, high-paying jobs that they're qualified for in fields such as engineering, science, finance and information technology. And while the reasons are complex, universities are partly at fault, the book argues."

Below are current job openings in New York's 10 regional economies. New Yorkers can view the region they live in, see which industries are growing and find out what jobs are available in that economic sector. Job opening numbers are updated frequently.

Hair transplantation has now grown into a separate field as it offers varied solutions depending upon the type of hair loss and economic scope. If performed from renowned surgeons and medical practitioners, you can expect good scalp cover and long lasting results.

For many companies, tough economic times inevitably end up pushing the work environment to the back burner. Benefits are slashed, innovative programs are dropped, employees get shut out of big decisions. Employees are lucky to have a job, many bosses figure. Anything extra is unaffordable.

"Beloit, Wis. - Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall's entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow. Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit's Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually. The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who's that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat. Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of sch

"We professors love to talk about quiet students: the men who slouch in the back row, hidden beneath their baseball caps; the women who smile congenially but never, ever raise their hands; the classes that leave us frustratedly channeling the hapless economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off as we plead in vain for student participation ("Anyone? Anyone?")."

"Excerpts from an interview by Wall Street Journal Capital columnist David Wessel with Gail Mellow, who has been president of LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, N.Y. for 10 years. The college, part of the City University of New York, has 13,500 credit and 30,000 non-credit students. (Read the related column.)"

"As the White House stages a first-of-its-kind community college summit Tuesday, the Obama administration is proposing that stronger partnerships between two-year public colleges and big-name U.S. employers such as McDonald's and The Gap will help better match workers with jobs during the economic recovery and beyond."

"Psychology majors might want to put themselves on the couch. Only 26% of psychology majors are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their career paths, the lowest in a sampling of popular majors included in a Wall Street Journal study. The psychology majors the survey captured had a satisfaction rate 14 percentage points lower than the next lowest majors, economics and environmental engineering."

"We read in newspaper headlines that the economy may have permanently lost 20 million jobs, that 70 million "baby-boomers" are ready to retire, that 50 percent of the workforce will be people of color by 2028, that younger workers are changing careers five to seven times, that America is losing its half-century of global economic dominance and that the global skills gap is worsening. The US workplace is experiencing radical transformational changes. These changes will require new skill-sets for future career success and to start closing the non-competitive skills gap."

"Research shows that motivation is positively correlated with college performance, academic discipline, and future occupational success. It is critical that practitioners and educators direct more attention toward implementing practices that focus specifically on increasing client motivation and behavior change-thus maximizing graduation rates and minimizing future educational, occupational, economic, and personal consequences (Miller & Rose, 2009; Willis 1994). Motivational Interviewing (MI) is one approach that is used to help clients engage in the career planning process."

"The unemployment rate dropped sharply last month, but employers continued cutting jobs in January as businesses remained insecure about the economic outlook. The jobless rate fell to 9.7% from 10% in December, the Labor Department said Friday, because its survey of households found more people landed jobs than entered or returned to the labor market. But a separate survey of employers, which counts how many workers are added or cut from payrolls, found that 20,000 jobs were eliminated last month. And revisions to last year's data found far more jobs were lost over the 12 months than previously predicted."

Recent economic events have forced colleges and universities to streamline their academic offerings congruent with a more pragmatic cost-benefit approach, usually at the expense of their liberal-arts programs. When a foreign-language or philosophy department graduates only a few students per year, there is no financial argument to be made for keeping the department intact. Traditional reasoning about the enrichment of the "student as future citizen" can only go so far when parents who pay the tuition or students taking the courses can't see a bottom line in the form of a lucrative job after graduation.

In a time of increasing competition and economic pressures, employers are faced with difficult recruitment and retention challenges. Learning Plans are a tool used by many organizations to link business needs with individual career development interests, thus potentially engaging and retaining employees for longer periods. Learning plans benefit both employers and employees, as they build a sense of ownership and motivation through communication and negotiation. Self-directed learning allows employees to take responsibility for their own learning and career development, as it involves a level of personal investment. Employers reap the benefits through supporting and investing in their employees, which leads to an increase in skill development, motivation, and productivity. How did Learning Plans come about?

Those working in metro areas scattered along the East and West coasts - San Jose, New York, Seattle - tended to get paid better last year than their middle-America counterparts, according to the Labor Department's report comparing occupational pay in 77 metro areas, released Wednesday. Employees in the heartland and in certain southern metro areas, such as Lincoln, Neb., and Tallahassee, Fla., earned the least.