employment
Department of Education: Pell Grant pilot program introduced for prisoners
Congress determined that incarcerated individuals were not eligible to receive educational Pell Grants, the U.S. Department of Education has launched a new pilot program where, on a limited basis, federal and state inmates can become qualified for educational funding — and classes — while behind bars. This program is part of the Obama administration’s efforts…
Read MoreNew York becomes first state to order $15 minimum wage for food service employees
New York is set to become the first state to offer a $15 minimum wage for fast-food employees, after almost three years of protests requesting higher wages in the food-service industry. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called an executive order to pass the initiative after the state Senate continued to drag its feet on raising pay. The…
Read MoreEEOC: sexual orientation now a protected class under Title VII
by federal law, discriminating against an individual on the basis of sexual orientation for employment purposes is illegal. In its ruling in Complainant v. Foxx, the EEOC stated, “Indeed, we conclude that sexual orientation is inherently a ‘sex-based consideration,’ and an allegation of discrimination based on sexual orientation is necessarily an allegation of sex discrimination…
Read MoreNebraska launches first-in-the-nation re-employment program
has announced that Nebraska will be launching a new re-employment program on October 1, 2015 — the first of its kind in the nation. Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Labor, the new program aims to assist individuals as they get back into the workforce after a bout of unemployment. The program would…
Read MoreEmployee or Contractor? Guidelines Employers Need to Know
released a new series of guidelines for helping employers to determine whether the individuals that work for them should be classified as “employees” or “independent contractors.” In 2014, the Department of Labor required companies to pay 109,000 misclassified workers more than $79 million in back pay. The Department has found that often, employees are misclassified…
Read MoreJune 2015: unemployment rate down to 5.3 percent for first time in years
release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has dropped 0.2 points down to 5.3 percent, the lowest the unemployment rate has been since April 2008. Last month, 223,000 new non-farming jobs were created, dropping the number of unemployed people down to 8.3 million. The majority of the new positions were available…
Read MoreNCDOT approves 10-year transportation improvement plan
more than 1,000 state-funded transportation projects between 2016 and 2025. The projects included in STIP cover all modes of transportation, with just fewer than half being related to highway work (418 projects) and interstate maintenance (138 projects). NCDOT will also work on railroad, aviation and public transit projects over the next decade. The NCDOT board…
Read MoreObama administration proposes expansion to employee overtime pay
could be raised to as high as $52,000. Under the current threshold, any salaried, white-collar employee who earns more than $23,660 per year does not qualify for overtime pay. Only about 12 percent of the workforce is eligible for overtime pay under this threshold, which falls below the poverty line. (Some estimate that fewer than…
Read MoreNSA announces web project to improve federal hiring, retention
launch an intelligence-hiring website for those interested in working with the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and other security agencies in the United States. That “brand-new applicant gateway” is expected to go live in the fall. The website is expected to include tools to help applicants determine what types of jobs…
Read MoreMay 2015 employment: new jobs in hospitality, but mining industry takes another hit
release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. saw an increase of 280,000 jobs in May, though the rate of unemployment remained steady at 5.5 percent. The mining industry continued to see a decline in available jobs, though available jobs in professional and business services increased, as did positions within the health care and…
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