By: Jacquelyn Smith, Forbes Staff With the employment picture finally perking up in some major metropolitan areas, job seekers might be tempted to limit their job search to the areas with the healthiest employment numbers. But low unemployment doesn’t always mean it’s the best place for finding a job. While cities with low unemployment might be the easiest areas for some to land a job, there may be little diversity in the industries hiring, the cost of living can be high, and the required skill sets can be too specific. The human resources firm Adecco Staffing U.S. looked at the  [ Read More ]

By: Lloyd Chapman – Small business advocate | The Huffington Post Today, under various federal laws, the term “small business” can define a range of companies, from businesses with less than 50 employees, to publicly traded corporations as large as Lockheed Martin — the federal government’s largest prime contractor. This question of how big a “small business” is, is of critical importance to our national economy. For example, when the House approved the Republican-sponsored “Small Business Tax Cut Act (H.R.9)” last week, legislators neglected to mention that under the bill many hedge funds, investment firms, C-corporations and pass-throughs worth billions  [ Read More ]

By: Aruna Viswanatha | Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An Obama administration task force probing misconduct that fueled the financial crisis is increasing its ranks, adding five financial analysts and 10 new federal prosecutors spread across the country, according to a senior Justice Department official. The increased staffing reflects a new push by the administration to aggressively pursue cases against firms and individuals who contributed to the 2007-2009 financial crisis, especially ahead of the November election. The U.S. Justice Department has so far brought few cases against high-profile targets since the crash. The department closed criminal investigations without bringing charges against  [ Read More ]

By David Schepp | Aol Jobs. If you’ve ignored career experts’ advice to be careful about what you post on social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, this new survey may frighten you. In a survey of some 2,300 hiring managers, nearly 40 percent said they screen potential hires using social media, and many say they reject job applicants as a result of what they find, according to a new survey released Wednesday by CareerBuilder. Hiring Now Search All Job Listings New York Jobs Los Angeles Jobs Chicago Jobs Philadelphia Jobs Nearly a third of hiring managers who currently research candidates  [ Read More ]

By: Scott Shane, Contributor | Forbes Less of the labor force is working in small businesses than in the early 1990s. After a brief resurgence from 2001 to 2004, the share of private sector employment in companies with between 1 and 249 employees has fallen. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show that the share of people working at small companies fell from 48.8 percent in 2004 to 47.6 percent in 2010. While the share of employment at small businesses declined during both the 2001 and the 2008-2009 recessions, the downturns alone are not responsible for the shift away from  [ Read More ]

Why Congress and the States Should Prohibit This Practice Have you ever gone to a job interview and had a prospective employer ask to see letters you’ve written to friends or family members, or your family photo albums? Have prospective employers asked for the key to your apartment so that they can snoop around? The answer to these questions should, of course, be “No.” Yet, as the Associated Press reported last week, employers—both public and private—are increasingly asking job applicants to do the equivalent, by turning over their Facebook user IDs and passwords as part of the interview process. This  [ Read More ]

By Pedram Tabibi | Young Island Twitter’s popularity is growing by the day, and the Tweet is now a daily (and preferred) method of communication for many. According to a recent infographic, there are currently over 465 million registered Twitter accounts and well over 100 million active users. Even I entered the Twitter world @PedramTabibi. Twitter is also beginning to see green, as Twitter’s projected advertising revenue will surpass half a billion dollars ($540 million) by 2014. At the same time, however, there are responsibilities and laws that come with Twitter use. As companies increasingly integrate social media platforms into  [ Read More ]

CaseReferral.org is the largest lawyer to lawyer free referral network on the internet. There are currently more than 200,000 lawyers listed nationally with more being added every day by practice area and geographic location. Lawyers are constantly being asked for recommendations for other lawyers based upon both practice area and location. Because Casereferral.org employs the latest search technology, lawyers can find you by simply entering the information they are looking for. There is no cost to be listed and any financial arrangement concerning referred cases is confidential and strictly between the lawyers involved. Casereferral.org has no access to that information  [ Read More ]

As the popularity of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter continues to grow, so too do employers continue to struggle with addressing social media issues in an effective, yet legal, way. A byproduct of this struggle is a social media report released by the National Labor Relations Board’s Acting General Counsel in late January. It provides a summary of all social media cases reviewed by the NLRB within the last year. The NLRB considered fourteen cases in 2011, with those cases involving two primary categories. One category of cases involved whether the written policy of an employer was  [ Read More ]

Welcome to our weekly review where we take a look at the blog posts we think matter the most in blogging, social media, SEO, and small business development. Blogging 17 Copy-And-Paste Blog Post Templates – Do you ever get writers block? If you do, read and bookmark this guest post on Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income site. It outlines 17 great ways to come up with blog post ideas when you don’t have a clue. Blog Smarter: Turn Your Blogging Skills into Successful Affiliate Promotions -This is an excellent guest post about how to create passive reoccurring revenue streams for  [ Read More ]

From the Washington Bureau By Arthur D. Postal State efforts to collect on unclaimed property held by insurers has mushroomed into private action lawsuits filed in Illinois, Ohio and New York against Prudential and MetLife. The lawsuits are coming to light against the background of a hearing Thursday on inaccuracies related to the Death Master File mainted by the Social Security Administration. The DMF is the primary research tool being used to allege that insurers did not follow applicable state law on unclaimed property, either by not being aggressive enough in seeking to find beneficiaries of life insurance policies, or,  [ Read More ]

By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech January 30, 2012: 2:03 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — A long list of tech IPOs captured attention in 2011, but no company has been drooled over like Facebook. And finally, its debut looks to be imminent. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Facebook may file for an initial public offering as early as this Wednesday. It’s still not certain if Facebook will actually file this week. But that hasn’t stopped people from speculating about how much Facebook might be worth. Some experts have suggested that the social network could be worth anywhere between $75  [ Read More ]

By: APP.com | Jan 25th, 2012 J.C. Penney is permanently marking down all of its merchandise by at least 40 percent so shoppers no longer have to wait for sales to get bargains. Penney said Wednesday that it is getting rid of the hundreds of sales it offers each year in favor of a simpler approach to pricing. Starting on Feb. 1, the retailer is rolling out an “Every Day” pricing strategy with much fewer sales throughout the year. The plan, the first major move by Apple executive Ron Johnson since he became Penney’s CEO in November, is different from  [ Read More ]

By: App.com |12:18 PM, Jan. 1, 2012 After an up and down 2011, will 2012 be the year the economy finally breaks out of its funk? Sallee Tee’s Grille reopened Dec. 15, more than three months after the remnants of Hurricane Irene flooded the Monmouth Beach restaurant with at least six inches of water, temporarily closing the business and displacing 70 employees. In hindsight, owner Joe Amiel said, the restaurant’s $500,000 renovation probably was overdue. It now has new floors, walls and equipment. Sixty percent of the staff has returned. And Amiel, looking ahead to 2012, is hopeful. “It was  [ Read More ]

Shades of Bank of America or Netflix: Verizon’s new $2 fee for paying a bill with a credit card has customers fuming. By Karen Datko on Thu, Dec 29, 2011 5:23 PM Could Verizon Wireless be following the likes of airlines and big banks — nickel-and-diming customers with new fees for things that used to be free? Starting Jan. 15, Verizon will charge customers at $2 fee if they pay their bill with a credit card online or over the phone. There are lots of ways to avoid the fee — and Verizon users should take advantage of them —  [ Read More ]