Home health agency gets rid of 80: The LHC Group, a Lafayette-based home health and hospice agency, says it laid off 80 employees. The (Lafayette) Advertiser says the layoffs were due to a 5% reimbursement cut on all Medicare home health services. LHC has 8,000 employees. The layoffs were limited to workers who don’t deal with patient care. It was not disclosed how many of the affected workers were based in Lafayette.
Lowest level since July 2008: Fewer people requested unemployment benefits last week, pushing the average number of applications over the past four weeks to the lowest level in more than two and a half years. Applications for unemployment benefits dropped by 22,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 391,000, the Labor Department says. It was the third decline in the past four weeks. The four-week average for applications, a less volatile figure, fell to 402,000. That’s the lowest number since late July 2008 and a sign that the job market may be slowly improving. The downward trend in applications indicates that layoffs are dropping steadily. But economists are still unsure when employers will begin hiring enough to make a dent in the 9% unemployment rate.
