Career Development

"Taking time off work when your kid gets the flu or chicken pox is usually a routine matter. But how do you explain your time-off needs if your teen - or spouse or partner -becomes too depressed to get out of bed, or your child becomes too anxious to go to school? Helping out a troubled loved one in such cases poses a dilemma, because the stigma placed on mental illness forces most people to keep it a secret. Yet a new survey shows people are taking off a surprisingly large amount of work time for this purpose. Some 41% of working adults took from four to nine days off work in the past year to deal with a mental-health issue of their own, or of a friend, family member or co-worker, says a recent survey of 669 working adults by Workplace Options."

"Giving kids' allowances raises lots of questions for parents: How much to pay? Should the money be tied to chores - and if so, which ones? Can the kids spend the money freely, or must they save part of it?"

"Starting salaries of new physicians reveal a growing gender gap. Newly-trained women doctors are being paid significantly lower salaries -about $17,000 less - than their male counterparts, found a new study published in the February issue of Health Affairs."

"There are nearly 14 million people looking for a job, but few have the skills to fill the four computer engineering openings at Gowalla Inc."

"When the number of employees Matt Kaplan managed at a lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson mushroomed from six to 30, the school called in a management coach to make sure he was prepared. What he learned surprised him-his employees thought he was distant and didn't trust their work. "The biggest challenge for me was realizing I couldn't do everything myself," he says. "I had to learn to trust my team, which was a gradual process." Experts say many bosses are similarly clueless about their appearance to employees. Here are five signals you may be one of them."

"For Valentine's Day on Monday, Amy McMahon will be celebrating twice. She's preparing a romantic candlelight dinner for her longtime boyfriend and giving him a gift card from his favorite fitness website. That same day, Ms. McMahon will be giving her "work husband" some small heart-shaped cakes and a sentimental card."

"Community colleges, long regarded as the most accessible realm of higher education, are becoming more difficult to access thanks to record enrollments combined with belt-tightening by state legislatures."

" In 2004, I left a technology company and jumped right into the insurance business. Now I really want to return to tech, but I am having a tough time overcoming and explaining this change. I believe I received very good insight and will do a better job now. How can I convey this to a new potential employer?"

"The biggest changes in family life sometimes happen gradually. New employment data suggest one such seismic change is upon us: Job-holding patterns between the generations have turned upside down."

"WASHINGTON-The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has begun a probe of whether employers and recruitment firms are unlawfully barring the unemployed from applying for certain jobs, the agency's chairman said. EEOC Chairman Jacqueline Berrien said at a hearing Wednesday that the agency began hearing anecdotal reports of the practice last summer, including from news reports and from worker-advocacy groups gathering examples of help-wanted advertisements that said only individuals who currently had jobs should apply. "We'll take a close look at what we heard and consider if there's anything we might need to do to clarify standards," she said."

"Interruptions at work, from email and phone calls to co-workers dropping by your office to talk, can complicate the juggle, extending your workday and draining personal time. But how far would you go to eliminate them? Would you book a conference room? Turn off your e-mail? Put up police tape outside your cubicle, to keep your co-workers away?"

Focused jobseeking: A measured approach to looking for work.

"When college presidents and other higher education leaders talk about federal policy these days, the most common theme is dismay at proposed new regulations from the Department of Education. But a close second is the inadequacy of data from the Education Department's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) for evaluating anything. "

Summary * Sixty percent of students change majors before graduating. * There are many factors that contribute to choosing a major. * If you're in the wrong major, it may be time to change. Picture yourself in a room with nine other college students. Before you graduate, at least six of those students will have changed their major at least once. And one or two of the remaining four will likely leave school regretting the major they chose and wishing they too had switched to another major.

"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."

"Among the explanations for the stubbornly high U.S. unemployment rate, factors such as housing troubles and extended unemployment benefits have played a leading role. Increasingly, though, economists and job seekers are identifying another problem: Employers are being pickier, or not trying as hard as they usually do to fill the openings they have."

"Community colleges are the "unsung heroes" of the American education system, President Obama said during a White House summit on community colleges on Tuesday-the first time such institutions have received such recognition at the presidential level, those involved in the event say-and they should play a critical role in achieving the administration's goal of leading the world in college graduation rates by 2020. "

"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."

"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.)"

Employment in New York State - PDF - September 2010