HAMMOND| Expenses mount during the holidays, but many employers are also hiring for part-time jobs that could bring in as much as an extra $120 for a weekend’s work.

That kind of extra cash could go a long way to paying off presents, air fare and the credit card debt that accumulates.

Area employers need to hire more seasonal workers this year for part-time positions that are often taken by moonlighters who already have full-time jobs, Staff Source Partner and Business Solutions President Dan Kesic said.

With an improved economy, the amount of holiday work available through the Hammond-based staffing and recruitment firm Staff Source is up an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent over last year, based on available hours.

Hotels, convention centers, casinos, country clubs and private caterers are all hiring this time of year. They need to fill hospitality roles for company holiday parties and other large group events.

To make sure party-goers are merry, they need servers, bussers, licensed bartenders, bar helpers and cleanup help. Typically they want workers with some experience working large events, including at public venues.

Shifts are typically at least four hours, and some are longer, but are booked well enough in advance by corporate clients to ensure a set, predictable schedule.

Pay usually ranges between $10 and $12 an hour for jobs where the workers don’t get tipped, and $7.25 when tips come into play.

Many people work the seasonal hospitality jobs through Staff Source only on the weekends, but are able to pick up enough hours to bring in an extra $80 to $120.

“We see that people who just want to work on the weekends, to work additional hours,” Staff Source director of operations Gus Lopez said. “They’re coming to seek these opportunities specifically in the hospitality industry.”

Anyone who’s interested in a seasonal hospitality job can go to open houses between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and Dec. 6 at the Staff Source office, 2500 165th St. in Hammond. Open houses also take place from 8 a.m. to noon every Tuesday and Thursday, except for Thanksgiving, at the Tinley Park Convention Center at Harlem Avenue at Interstate 80.

For more information, call (219) 989-9675.

Find the full article at: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/staff-source-hiring-for-multiple-seasonal-part-time-jobs/article_75014ee5-002e-5cac-b03b-640cb5738bc5.html

HOBART | What’s your “wow” factor, and what can you do to multiply it? Is the conventional wisdom about the 2008 financial crisis all wrong? Why haven’t charities been able to fix poverty, homelessness or breast cancer?

Such thought-provoking questions were explored at TEDx CountyLineRoad, the first TED event to take place in Northwest Indiana. The morning-long conference Thursday was a locally organized offshoot of the the popular TED Talks videos, which feature speakers sharing “ideas worth spreading” about technology, entertainment and design in short presentations of less than 18 minutes. The aspiration is to showcase ideas that could change the world, or in this case, the Calumet Region.

“What is Northwest Indiana’s ‘wow,’ and what can it do to reproduce it?” said Bob Bouwer, senior pastor of Faith Church in Dyer.

A sell-out crowd of 100 community leaders gathered at County Line Orchard in Hobart for Northwest Indiana’s inaugural TEDx event, which was organized by young professionals who met during the campaign for a South Shore Rail expansion and wanted to get more people talking about the region’s future.

“The young and talented people who had the vision for doing this take great interest in the community, and want you to go forth and multiply the ideas presented,” said emcee John Cain, executive director of the South Shore Arts Center and the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra.

In video presentations, speakers discussed how great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Apple’s Steve Jobs inspired action with belief, and how non-profits have been stuck at about 2 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product for the last 40 years, because a bias against high overhead has made it difficult to advertise and hire talented leaders who could grow their scale.

Economist Brian Wesbury started the day with a talk about what caused the 2008 financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession, which he said is commonly misunderstood. The Federal Reserve kept the interest rate low at about 1 percent between 2001 and 2003, prompting people to buy larger homes in nicer neighborhoods that they might not have been able to afford if interest rates were higher. The potential losses from bad loans added up to more than $200 billion, which is a large sum but small compared to the $15 trillion size of the economy.

Mark-to-market accounting, which values assets and liabilities based on the estimated current market price instead of historical cost, exacerbated the danger that bad bank assets posed to the overall economy, and the economy improved after Congress did away with it, Wesbury said.

Excellence By Design owner Norma Williams shared her personal story about how she went from being a struggling single mother to a successful owner of a painting company that creates employment opportunities for disadvantaged women. She urged people to make an impact by finding their passion, which in her case is helping women “the world has thrown away.”

“The African proverb is it takes a village to raise a child, but what happens if the village leaders are broken?” she said. “We’ve traded in a community mentality for an island one.”

Her company hires women who are under-qualified but get on-the-job training, including some who are in county work-release programs. She encouraged others to step up to help women and children who have been left behind by society.

“I can offer a stepping-stone of hope for women in need, but I only have so many stones to offer,” Williams said. “The community needs to come together. Whether you’re a baker or a banker, everyone has something they can offer.”

Bouwer talked about the power of “wow,” such as how a restaurant’s house-made ketchup and monstrous portions of pancakes ensure it’s packed every weekend because of a positive word-of-mouth reputation. The senior pastor also stressed the aphorism “if it’s alive, it’s meant to multiply,” which inspired him as he took over a 250-member church in Dyer and attracted a following large enough to outgrow a new $9.2 million church building in 12 months, to the point where it had to establish satellite churches.

Faith Church now has 11 sites in Northwest Indiana and Chicago’s south suburbs and aspires to get to 20 by 2020, including locations under development in Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Bouwer’s church grew by wowing people, and he said everyone has something unique and special they can wow others with.

“What about you is a wow skill?” he asked. “Once you discover that knowledge, get better at it.”

Inspirational talk abounded at the event. LaPorte Mayor Blair Milo encouraged people to draw inspiration from Walt Disney and try to create the happiest place on earth in Northwest Indiana in a talk that emphasized happiness as an economic development strategy.

The online retailer Zappos.com created a corporate culture of happiness so it would provide better customer service, inspire more customer loyalty and ultimately increase profits. Milo said such an approach could made the overall economy more productive in an increasingly globally competitive world.

“As Walt Disney said, all your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them,” she said.

Anyone who wasn’t able to attend can go online to view the videos, which will soon be posted to www.tedxcountylineroad.com.

Find the full article at: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/nwi-s-first-tedx-wows-with-big-ideas/article_b72bea8c-9b93-52f1-95be-b366ed5aca3a.html

November 7, 2014

Statement from Conner Prairie President and Chief Executive Officer Ellen Rosenthal:

“I can’t think of a more deserving family to receive this recognition. The Reynolds family has truly made our community a better place to live. They have also made Conner Prairie a better place. Gary spoke on behalf of his family at the event and delivered a message that I will never forget. He thanked his father and mother, A.W. “Mac” and Arline Reynolds, for living their values and showing him and his siblings the importance of giving back to the community. His father once told him, “The giver is not as important as the gift.”

Source: Conner Prairie Interactive History Park

November 7, 2014

News Release

HAMILTON COUNTY, Ind. – The Legacy Fund Living Legacy Award was given to the children of A.W. “Mac” and Arline Reynolds, including Gary and Cindy Reynolds, as well as Reynolds Farm Equipment for their philanthropic contributions to Fishers and Hamilton County. The award was made during Legacy Fund’s Celebration of Philanthropy on Thursday, November 6th. An annual event, Celebration of Philanthropy was held at the Ritz Charles in Carmel, and in addition to the award ceremony, featured a showcase of 37 of the county’s not-for-profit organizations. Approximately 400 people attended the event.

Created by Legacy Fund, an affiliate of Central Indiana Community Foundation, the award recognizes Hamilton County residents for their philanthropic contributions to the community. The Reynolds, and the company founded by Mac Reynolds and wife, Arline, in 1955 were the sixth recipients of the Living Legacy Award. Mac and Arline were active in the Fishers United Methodist Church, the church’s food pantry (Come To Me), Central Indiana Youth for Christ, Good News Ministries and Third Phase, Hamilton County’s largest shelter, food and clothing pantry.

Both were involved in a number of service organizations: Arline Reynolds participated in the Carmel Music Study Club and President and District Officer of the United Methodist Women. Mac Reynolds was a charter member of the Fishers Lion Club and also the Community Volunteer Fire Department and in 1998 received the state’s highest service award, The Sagamore of the Wabash. Free to the public, the company’s annual Christmas light display raises money for Come To Me Food Pantry, and annually surpasses $30,000 in contributions to the pantry.

Mac Reynolds passed away in 2008; Arline died in 2013. In 2014, Reynolds Farm Equipment headquarters were relocated from Fishers to Atlanta, Indiana. Gary Reynolds, now the company’s president, is a respected member of the Conner Prairie Board among other groups and not-for-profit pursuits. Previous recipients of Legacy Fund’s Living Legacy Award include the Crosser family, Sonny Beck family, Judi Campbell Lowe, M.D. and family and the Jim and Juanita Harger family.

“The Reynolds family and their company represent the best of Hamilton County and our community, and are truly the embodiment of philanthropy,” said Terry Anker, President, Legacy Fund. “They have given their time, talent and treasure for people in need now, and also for our community’s future and wellbeing. We have all benefited from their dedication and gifts.”

ABOUT LEGACY FUND:

Legacy Fund, an affiliate of the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF), serves Hamilton County by administering charitable funds, foundations and organizational endowments for individuals, families and not-for-profit entities. Established in 1991, Legacy Fund’s goal is to inspire philanthropy as it helps people enhance their family and charitable legacies in tax-smart ways. Legacy Fund has three main priorities: consult with donors, family foundations and professional advisors on charitable giving; award grants; and provide leadership to address community needs. For more information, contact Mike Knight at 317.843.2479 or mikek@cicf.org.

Source: The Central Indiana Community Foundation

 

The full article can be found at: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=67979

HAMMOND | Working hard remains the “price of admission” into the top echelons of business, said a panel of five prominent women at Wednesday’s 10th Annual Business Expo luncheon at Dynasty Banquet Center.

Other characteristics of successful women in business include education, being lifelong learners, taking chances, accepting challenges, persevering and carving out time for self and family, they said.

Hosted by the Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce, the luncheon panel featured Denise Dillard, chief consultant, government and external affairs at Methodist Hospitals; Barbara Greene, president of Franciscan Health Care in Munster; Mary Tilak, M.D., internal medicine specialist; Carla Morgan, attorney for the City of East Chicago; and Kathleen O’Leary, president of NIPSCO.

Jim Dedelow, of WJOB, moderated the panel discussion, which gave the five women opportunities to tell the stories of their success and give advice to young women starting out in their careers.

Common themes emerged in the hour-long talk.

A supportive family is one of the key factors in their success said O’Leary, Tilak and Dillard.

“My mother ran her own health clinic in India, which was basically a third-world country. She was an obstetrician and family practitioner. That was five, six decades ago. She delivered babies in the front room of a small apartment,” Tilak said. “She taught me that you work hard, you’re intelligent and follow your passion.”

Getting a good education also is vital, the women said.

“I chose to go to Notre Dame to compete with people who run this country,” said Morgan, who grew up in East Chicago’s Indiana Harbor section. Greene agreed.

“Education is number one. Get your foundation in place, be consistent and persevere,” she said. “I think the glass ceiling is softening.”

Perseverance means knowing up front it’s not going to be easy, said Dillard, who graduated from Horace Mann High School in 1971, in the era of court-ordered busing to integrate the Gary schools.

“You can’t just say, ‘I want it.’ You have to show up and show out. As African-American women, we had a triple challenge — being of color, educated and women,” she said.

Morgan advised young women wanting careers in business to “work smart. Create your own atmosphere around you. Learn to change your environment. Make moves.”

Other advice the women offered included seeking out mentors, volunteering and signing up for unpaid internships to boost a resume, knowing where you want to be in five to 10 years and supporting one another.

“Somebody took a chance on me,” O’Leary said. “Women are definitely supporting one another. Corporately (at NIPSCO), we’re doing more.”

Find the full article at: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/leading-women-in-business-share-triumphs-tips/article_0ed276e8-e534-58a3-9042-9f749e058da5.html

MERRILLVILLE | Business owners who are even contemplating an investment should put aside any lingering reservations and act now, according to a leading economist.

Jeff Korzenik, chief of investment strategies for Fifth Third Bank, said it’s a good time to expand a business or make a large capital investment as the economy continues to recover.

“For the business owners and decision makers, labor is tight and capital is old,” he said. “If you’re even thinking about refreshing your fleet of vehicles or updating and expanding your machinery, you should consider making that investment today. In the economy, delivery times are stretching out and the cost of financing a capital investment is going up. It’s not a bad time for equity investment. Interest rates are low, and sitting on cash yields nothing.”

Korzenik delivered the remarks while addressing a crowd of bankers and business people at the Radisson at Star Plaza in Merrillville, at an event sponsored by the Northwest Indiana Forum last week. The economist is an executive who oversees investments for the Cincinnati-based regional bank, which has $144 billion in deposits and more than 2,200 employees in Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

Volatility is normal in any economic expansion, so business leaders should not overreact to any bad news, because things are trending up, Korzenik said. About 60 percent of purchasing managers just reported seeing improving conditions last month.

“It’s a positive reading that shows things are getting better,” he said.

Nationally, unemployment has fallen to 5.9 percent. The long-term unemployment rate is coming down very quickly, and it should soon drive wages up as hiring becomes more competitive, Korzenik said. The number of workers willing to quit their jobs because they’ve lined up a new one or are optimistic they can find another has normalized for the first time in years. Employers, however, are still having trouble finding qualified job candidates.

“Bank customers have been consistently telling us, particularly in the transportation and manufacturing sectors, they would like to hire but are having a hard time finding anyone who can pass a drug test,” he said.

“It’s increasingly a big issue. The plural of anecdote is not data, but it’s what we’ve been hearing in Atlanta, Charlotte, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. It seems to be a representative trend.”

But overall economic growth is evident, as business owners are exercising more pricing power, such as by raising prices for hotels and airfare, Korzenik said. Higher prices at restaurant chains and big-box stores that typically underperform in tough economic environments show the pace of economic growth has turned decidedly positive.

In recent decades, business managers have shifted focus from pricing power to controlling costs, but the unprecedented energy boom in the United States and the rise of living standards in developing nations has closed the cost gap to the point where the United States should be able to win back some of the manufacturing that had been exported overseas.

Other long-term trends bode well for the U.S. economy, including a rising birth rate that should buoy single-family home sales well into the next decade, Korzenik said.

In the short term, low crude oil prices of between $80 and $85 per barrel mean consumers spend less on gasoline and have more money in their pockets. Such low prices also insulate the overall economy from a disruptive spike in oil prices that could occur because of the unrest in the Middle East, he said.

The U.S. economy also continues to innovate, such as with driverless cars, the internet of things, and drones that have delivered six-packs of beer to people ice fishing in upper Wisconsin. Technological innovation has allowed more and more vehicles to shift to low cost natural gas, and the more widespread adoption of a lower cost fuel could boost the economy as much as the conversion from whale oil to kerosene did in the 19th century.

“The pessimist is considered smart, but history is on the side of the optimists,” he said. “There’s reason for optimism because good things are happening in the U.S. economy.”

The article can be found at: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/economist-says-conditions-ripe-for-business-investment/article_ecd97593-8688-5f6e-8533-bf21f2c710eb.html

http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/economist-says-conditions-ripe-for-business-investment/article_ecd97593-8688-5f6e-8533-bf21f2c710eb.html

Industrial users find plenty of economic benefits when they base their operations in Northwest Indiana.

Chris Gary is rarely surprised when industrial users choose to open their manufacturing or distribution businesses in Northwest Indiana instead of the Chicago market.

Operating in this slice of Indiana — which includes such traditionally manufacturing-friendly cities as Hammond, East Chicago and Gary — comes with a host of benefits, the most important of which is the lower cost of doing business here.

“In general, your costs of operation will be down in Northwest Indiana,” said Gary, a vice president and industrial specialist with Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.-based NAI Hiffman. “The soft costs — the workers’ compensation costs and unemployment insurance rates — are terrific in Northwest Indiana. The utility rates can be less. The state government and municipalities have been very aggressive in attracting Illinois businesses, so there are often incentives. It’s a good place to run an industrial business.”

End users know this. For proof, just look at the major industrial projects going on here. ITR America at the end of 2013 completed a 100,000-square-foot build-to-suit facility in Hobart, Ind. Munster Steel is now building a 123,000-square-foot center in Hammond, Ind., for its operations.

Urschel Laboratories is building a 350,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Chesterton, Ind., in the Coffee Creek Center. This project, which also includes a new headquarters building for the company, will cost $104 million.

Then there’s chemical company MonoSol, which recently bought a 23-acre site in the Portage, Ind., business park AmeriPlex at the Port. The company plans to build a 300,000-square-foot manufacturing plant.

“Those are four substantial projects. What’s interesting is that each is a manufacturing project, not a distribution project,” Gary said. “That’s a little counter to the market overall. To put a rough number on it, roughly 75 percent to 80 percent of new industrial deals tend to be distribution deals. But here, these four big projects are all manufacturing deals. I would chalk that up to the fact that historically, Northwest Indiana has a bit of a labor advantage to Illinois.”

Those lower labor costs, of course, is one reason why industrial users might choose to locate in Northwest Indiana instead of the Chicago-area market. Labor costs are lower on the Indiana side of the border. Indiana is also a right-to-work state, which is also attractive to industrial users.

Then there’s the way workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance are calculated in Northwest Indiana. Gary estimates that end users can save up to $1,500 a year for every worker in soft costs if they do business in Northwest Indiana instead of Illinois.

“If you have a lot of employees, if you have 100 or 200 employees, that can come out to $150,000 to $300,000 of soft-cost savings,” Gary said. “That is real money. That is one of the reasons why manufacturing projects have come to the forefront in Northwest Indiana at the moment.”
– See more at: http://www.rejournals.com/2014/05/13/industrial-users-find-plenty-of-economic-benefits-when-they-do-business-in-northwest-indiana/#sthash.OX1bSuAL.dpufDoing Business In Northwest Indiana…

Recruitment process outsourcing is still new for a lot of companies. Some may not realize that there are options in how to outsource or to improve their recruiting process, while others may stick with other solutions because that’s the way it’s always done and that’s the way the boss likes to do things. However, if you’re serious about RPO (recruiting process outsourcing) and really want to know what it could do for your organization, then here are the six awesome benefits of RPO.

1. Reduced Recruiting Costs

This is one of the top reasons why organizations choose an RPO solution, and it’s also one of the biggest benefits of RPO. Many companies spend a lot of money on headhunters and job boards, or waste a lot of money through high turnover rates. With other companies, time is simply wasted in lengthy hiring processes or outdated (or a lack of) technology. An RPO provider can reduce recruiting costs by streamlining your recruiting process and showing you how to find good candidates better and with less time and money.

2. Scalable Recruiting Capacity

Christmas season is here, and many employers during this time go through a hiring spree for seasonal employees. If that’s you, then an awesome benefit of RPO is having a recruiting process in place that can scale up for the Christmas season, and then scale back down at the beginning of the next year. RPO is also great for companies that are growing rapidly, that may need extra help in scaling their recruiting capacity to meet growth.

3. A Consistent and Predictable Recruit-to-Hire Process 

Candidates don’t like it if they don’t know where they stand in the recruiting process, or if they don’t know what’s happening or what’s supposed to happen next. This problem could also plague companies who have multiple entities or multiple departments, where each one could have their own hiring process. RPO can help get everything together and make the recruit-to-hire process consistent and predictable for both parties and across the entire organization. This makes it easier to know what’s going on and what everyone is doing to when recruiting or hiring someone.

4. Increased Candidate Quality

Hiring managers know that a great candidate is much more than a combination of experience and education, but also includes personality and previous accomplishments. Hiring managers who are pressed for time to fill a position, or have a ton of candidates to go through, may not necessarily take a look at the qualities that determine whether or not the new hire will stick with the position. An RPO solution can get into those qualities while still looking for candidates who have the needed experience and education.

5. Increased Hiring Manager Satisfaction 

The increased hiring manager satisfaction comes from many aspects of RPO. Hiring managers now have better away to assess the success of their efforts. Hiring managers now have more support from executives in the recruiting process. Hiring managers now aren’t stretched so thin and are better able to do their jobs. With the help and partnership of an RPO provider, hiring managers will be more satisfied with what’s accomplished and how candidates are recruited and brought into the company.

6. Enhanced Employment Brand

The employment brand is essentially the identity of the company as an employer, and when every other aspect of the recruiting process is in place and doing well, the employment brand improves. If your candidate quality improves, that only looks good to other potential candidates for your organization. If your hiring managers are satisfied and are working in a consistent recruit-to-hire process, then people who go through that process will only have good things to say about it and your company as an employer. Overall, RPO helps the company in many more ways that just cutting recruiting costs or filling positions faster. RPO can actually help a business become a better place to work.

Article Link: http://resources.rpoassociation.org/blog/bid/246841/6-Awesome-Benefits-of-Recruitment-Process-Outsourcing-RPO

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week than at any time since before the last recession, indicating bigger gains in hiring will soon follow.

Jobless claims decreased by 32,000 to 300,000 in the week ended April 5, the least since May 2007, seven months before the worst economic slump in the post-World War II era began, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. Another report showed rising gasoline prices were hurting consumer sentiment.

A drop in firings signal employers are optimistic sales will pick up following a weather-related slowdown at the start of the year, which will pave the way for bigger increases in employment as demand rebounds. More jobs and growing incomes would help lift confidence and provide a spark for consumer spending, which makes up the largest part of the economy.

“I’m pretty optimistic about the labor market,” said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies LLC in New York, whose forecast for 310,000 claims was the lowest in the Bloomberg survey. “Slack in the labor force should start to be absorbed more quickly, and that should put some upward on wages as well.”

Article link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-10/jobless-claims-in-u-s-decline-to-lowest-level-since-may-2007.html

People who have been out of work for an extended period, once hired, tend to be just as productive on the job as those with more typical work histories, according to an analysis of almost 20,000 employees.

The research, provided to Bloomberg News by San Francisco-based Evolv Inc., shows no statistically significant difference in measures of job performance between two pools of entry-level call center agents: those who hadn’t held a single full-time job in at least five years before they applied for the position, and the rest. Evolv, which helps large companies assess and manage hourly workers, analyzed data collected from six employers in about 90 locations in the U.S.

The findings buttress President Barack Obama’s call to American businesses to give the long-term unemployed “a fair shot” amid growing evidence that employers have preferred to hire candidates without prolonged jobless spells. Some 3.7 million workers have been out of work for 27 weeks or more as of March, according to Labor Department data released today.

“We have statistical proof that hiring somebody among the long-term unemployed is equal to somebody who is not long-term unemployed,” said Max Simkoff, chief executive officer and co-founder of Evolv.

Job seekers wait in line at a job fair on March 28, 2014 in Washington, DC.

Evolv tracked four measures of job performance, each collected every day of the worker’s tenure. The variables included the average time it took for the agent to complete a transaction, customer satisfaction ratings, supervisor evaluations, and the percentage of the workday spent at his or her desk.

No Worse

About 14 percent of the employees in the sample reported having had no full-time job for the five years leading up to the time they applied for the position. After excluding people who had been in school for the year up to the time they applied for the job, Evolv’s analysts found that the long-term unemployed still performed no worse than those without an extended jobless spell.

The findings are encouraging news for Federal Reserve policy makers, provided that recruiters heed Evolv’s findings. The U.S. central bank has deployed record stimulus to bring down unemployment, even as some critics have warned that further accommodation won’t help because a prolonged period of high joblessness has made some workers permanently unemployable.

“The concern is that the long-term unemployed may remain on the sidelines, ultimately dropping out of the workforce,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said March 31 in her first speech as the head of the central bank as she highlighted the plight of struggling Americans. “But the data suggest that the long-term unemployed look basically the same as other unemployed people in terms of their occupations, educational attainment, and other characteristics.”

Qualified Candidates

For employers, Evolv’s results suggest that they’re missing out on qualified candidates, Simkoff said. In one experiment, researchers at the University of Toronto, the University of Chicago and McGill University submitted about 12,000 fake resumes to apply for about 3,000 jobs. At eight months of unemployment, callbacks were about 45 percent lower than at one month of unemployment, the study showed.

Among those struggling to find work is Vincent Ramsey, 56, who lost his security job at Villanova University in Pennsylvania in May 2012 and has been looking since. He said he’s applied for about 30 positions a week mostly in areas in which he’s had experience, such as customer service and childcare.

‘Positive Traits’

“With all the positive traits that I have, somebody’s still finding fault with me,” said Ramsey, referring to his punctuality and work ethic as well as the breadth of his work record. “I don’t understand it. Wherever you put me at any job, I connect with people. I’ve done this successfully everywhere.”

More than 300 companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and automaker Ford Motor Co. signed a White House pledge to develop initiatives for hiring and recruiting job-seekers who have been out of work for an extended period.

“It’s a cruel Catch-22 — the longer you’re unemployed, the more unemployable you may seem,” Obama said Jan. 31. “They just need a chance.”

Published by Bloomberg

Article link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-04/long-term-unemployed-make-for-just-as-strong-hires-study.html

Just over half of U.S. businesses that pay the minimum wage would hire fewer workers if the federal standard is raised to $10.10 per hour, according to a survey by a large staffing firm to be released Wednesday. But the same poll found a majority of those companies would not cut their current workforce.

About two-thirds of employers paying the minimum wage said they would raise prices for goods or services in response to an increase, the survey by Express Employment Professionals found. About 54% of minimum-wage employers would reduce hiring if the federally mandated rate increased by $2.85 per hour. A smaller share—38% — said they would lay off employees if the wage increase favored by President Barack Obama becomes law.

The poll, designed to gauge businesses’ reaction to the wage increase, marks the latest effort by businesses and groups on both sides of the issue to shape a heated debate about whether increasing pay for workers at the bottom will help or hurt the U.S. economy.

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, released last month, found a jump to $10.10 per hour would cost the U.S. about 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016. But the study said the increase would also lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty by boosting incomes for the working poor. The CBO study reviewed the work of a range of economists.

The staffing firm’s survey of about 1,200 companies, conducted last month, found that a wage increase would alter hiring plans for a sizable share of all employers including those that don’t have minimum-wage workers. Among all businesses polled, 19% said they would let employees go as a result of the wage increase and 39% said future hiring would be reduced.

“The response shows that some businesses will certainly lose employees and many will not be hiring as much, if the minimum wage goes up,” Express chief executive Bob Funk said in an interview. “In a time of weak job growth like we’ve had recently, this is not the right time for a wage hike.”

Though Mr. Funk said he thinks a minimum-wage increase would hurt the overall economy, he said his firm could actually benefit because it would take a share of the higher wages paid to the workers it places. Wednesday’s survey from Express is not the company’s first report to challenge a key piece of the president’s agenda. Last year, the company published a paper arguing the Affordable Care Act would reduce job creation and erode the number of people working in full-time jobs.

The Oklahoma City firm, which caters to mostly small- and medium-sized businesses, said increasing the minimum wage would put upward pressure on labor costs for all employers because workers who earn close to $10 per hour also would seek raises if the bottom level was increased by almost 40%.

Results of the Express survey are roughly in line with other polls measuring business reaction to a minimum wage increase.

A Duke University/CFO Magazine survey of chief financial officers, released last week, found that 47% of retail firms and about a third of service and manufacturing companies would reduce jobs if the minimum wage rose to $10 per hour.

A survey from Wells Fargo and Gallup released in November found that 28% of small-business owners said they would reduce their current workforce in response to a minimum wage increase to $9 per hour.

President Obama called on Congress more than a year ago to raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour. Earlier this year, as part of a strategy to combat income inequality, he embraced legislation introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D. Calif.) to increase the minimum wage in stages to $10.10 an hour and index it to inflation afterward.

Published by The Wall Street Journal

Article Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/19/minimum-wage-increase-could-slow-future-hiring-employment-survey-shows/