On the way down: After six years of state worker layoffs, no rank-and-file state employees have been targeted for pink slips this budget year. That’s according to the Department of Civil Service, which issued its latest monthly report on layoffs Monday, The Associated Press reports. Nearly 8,400 classified state employees—those who have civil service job protections and aren’t at-will political appointees—have been laid off since 2008, as the state struggled with repeated budget gaps and Gov. Bobby Jindal pushed to shrink the size of state government. Read the full story.
Word games: U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister has a message for Gov. Bobby Jindal after the governor once again called the congressman “an embarrassment” whom he won’t be endorsing because of McAllister’s kissing scandal with a former staffer. “Tell the governor I said, ‘Thank you,'” McAllister, R-Swartz, tells The News Star of Monroe. While speaking at the Iowa State Fair over the weekend, Jindal repeated the remarks he made when the McAllister scandal broke earlier this year, saying the congressman should have resigned and is making a mistake seeking re-election. Read the full story.
The tide is turning: The balance of power in the job market is shifting slowly toward employees from employers. As Bloomberg reports, companies are beefing up their in-house recruiting teams and increasingly using complicated computer algorithms to scour the Web for prospective job candidates. This is all good news for the economy, according to Nariman Behravesh, a Massachusetts-based chief economist for IHS Inc. He says the U.S. has entered a “virtuous cycle” where job gains are leading to increased household expenditures, encouraging employers to hire more workers. Read the full story.
