Americans Are Addicted to Work We Hate

Health benefits of becoming employed depend on job quality: study

(NEWSER) - Studies have found that unemployment is bad for a person's mental health, but new research has discovered that having a lousy job can be as bad or worse. The researchers studied thousands of people of working age and found that while getting a good job after a period of unemployment significantly boosts mental health, the mental well-being of those who entered jobs with terrible pay, no security, and no workplace support dropped below that of people who remained jobless, the Chicago Tribune reports. More»

DC tops search engine's list

(NEWSER) - Washington, DC is the easiest city in the country to land a job, says job-search site Juju.com, which ranked cities by comparing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ figures on unemployed workers to the number of job postings on Juju itself. The site finds 1.87 “unemployed individuals per advertised job” in the District. More»

To get ahead, steer clear of religion, politics, and 'The Office'

(NEWSER) - A thoughtful holiday gift for your boss can smooth out your workday and even help your career. But not all gifts are created equal. David Seaman of The Street lists some to avoid:

• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: A self-help or management book "implies that you don't think they are at all effective at what they do."
• "A creepy holiday card": It "could get forwarded straight to HR and then you've got a real problem on your hands."

Fed officials predict it will take about 5 years to return to normal

(NEWSER) - Unemployment will remain higher than normal for years to come, Fed officials predicted today. Even at the end of 2012, the rate is forecast to be between 6.8% and 7.5%—a decent turnaround from the current 10.2% but still about 2 points higher than the figure in healthy times. Even though the economy is technically in recovery, it will take "about five or six years" for the labor market to right itself, the officials said. More»

Employment picture likely to remain grim for years, and predicting winning industries is a challenge

(NEWSER) - The job market is likely to be grim for years to come—economists expect that even if job creation returned to the brisk pace of the ‘90s, unemployment wouldn’t return to 5% until 2017. And for many of the unemployed, the numbers belie the real problem: The positions they're trained for may be gone forever. The real estate and finance industries, for example, will probably never support as many employees as they did before the recession. More»