OTG Daily News

NEW YORK — Between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores will be closed, the retailer said Tuesday, after terrible holiday sales during what is the most crucial time of the year for retailers. Sears has yet to determine which stores will be closed, but there has been a clear shift in where the retailer will devote its resources. The company is moving away from its practice of propping up "marginally performing" stores in hopes of improving their performance . Sears said it will now concentrate on cash-generating stores. "Given our performance and the difficult economic environment, especially for big-ticket items, we intend to implement a series of actions to reduce ongoing expenses, adjust our asset base, and accelerate the transformation of our business model," said CEO Louis D'Ambrosio. "These actions will better enable us to focus our investments on serving our customers." Sears would not discuss how many, if any, jobs would be cut. Sears H...

Ask 50 people about jobs they held during their 30s and you'll likely get 50 unique stories. While some workers spend that decade progressing in a field they entered in their 20s, others change career paths altogether or modify their employment to better align with their personal life. Here, individuals reflect on how their jobs during that stage differed from jobs they held when they were younger and how these jobs influenced the rest of their lives. Balancing career and family During her 20s, Margaret Miller of El Paso, Texas taught English at private high schools in New England . But when she became a mom at 30, she decided to pursue a different path. "In my 30s, I was a stay-at-home mom and wrote articles about parenting and education to help pay the bills," Miller says. "This was ideal since I could work from my house and be there with my kids when they were young." Now that her kids have grown up and are out of the house, Miller has opted to blend...

What makes a job awful? Lousy growth potential? A micromanaging boss ? Unsupportive, lazy colleagues? Online salary database PayScale.com  surveyed workers in a variety of industries and discovered that it’s not high stress or low pay that determines career misery -- it’s both. The combination of being stressed out and broke trumps all other career-related gripes. Certainly there are higher-stress jobs out there, but if the pay is good, workers seem willing to bear the anxiety. Likewise, for the totally stress-averse, there are plenty of jobs that won’t ruffle feathers, but also likely won’t pay well. Unfortunately, as with chemical-dependency counselors or parole officers, many of the workers dealing with high stress and low pay provide essential social services. “We can't have a society with no probation officers, no social workers,” says Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale.com. “We should maybe talk about where we want to spend our money as a society.” T...

We’re starting to hear bits and pieces of good news on the job front these days. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the number of job openings in September was 3.4 million, up from 3.1 million in August. Last week, we learned that the unemployment rate dropped from 9.1 percent to 9 percent. And a recent CareerBuilder survey found that 29 percent of retailers plan to hire seasonal workers for the holidays, with 30 percent of employers planning to transition some holiday help into full-time, permanent staff. Want some more good news? Here’s a list of 10 companies hiring this week: 1. American Management Services Industry: Consulting, sales/marketing, management Sample job titles: Field sales manager, consultant/senior executive analyst, business coordinator 2. Bob Evans Industry: Restaurants Sample job titles: Restaurant assistant manager, marketing intern, GM 3. Cardinal Health Industry: Health-care distribution/supplies Sample job titles: Sales represent...

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard University as a dropout with a novel idea. He returned Monday with a triumphant message: He's hiring. The 27-year-old CEO received a rock-star welcome during his first official visit since he left for California's Silicon Valley in 2004 . He made his recruitment pitch to 250 students at Harvard after a similar meeting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . "We're just getting started," he told reporters and a few hundred students who gathered at the Harvard campus to catch a glimpse of the Internet pioneer. "The next five or 10 years are going to be about all the different products and industries that can be rethought." So many students turned out to see the sweatshirted billionaire outside a university library that campus officials had to set up temporary barriers to separate him from his audience. Aaron Perez, an 18-year-old freshman from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said...

Waiting for the cable guy and other in-home services cost American workers almost $38 billion in the past year, according to a new study. That's the cost of two full workdays for every U.S. employee -- not just the ones who stayed home from work to wait on a service call, TOA Technologies CEO Yuval Brisker said in a statement . TOA Technologies sponsored the study. Fifthy-eight percent of respondents to the 2011 "Cost of Waiting" study said they had waited at home for delivery, service or repair people three times in the past year, with an average wait time of 4.5 hours. More than 25% said waiting resulted in lost wages, and 50% said it cost them a sick day or vacation day. Taking a half day off work to wait for a furniture delivery or appliance repair appointment is bad enough, but survey respondents reported that the wait times were a full 2.5 hours longer than they expected. And what do people do while they wait? They complain, of course. As Multichannel News...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits. Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-termunemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more. Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further. The ranks of the poor would also rise. The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people from slipping into poverty last year. It defines poverty as annual income below $22,314 for a family of four. Yet for a growing share of the unemployed, a vote in Congress to extend the benefits to 99 weeks is irrelevan...

The fourth quarter gets a bum rap when it comes to hiring, but if you're a job seeker, you shouldn't completely discount the final months of the year. Though it is true that some industries put the brakes on hiring during Q4, November can actually be a fruitful time for job seekers. For one, many employers want to get positions filled before the holiday season kicks into high gear, motivating hiring managers to make decisions before Thanksgiving. Plus, hiring for holiday positions ramps up in November as hospitality, retail and transportation companies scramble to get staff in place before busy season begins. Finally, the end of the year can mean less competition for job seekers, since many people put their searches on hold until the New Year in order to enjoy the holiday season. Still need proof that it's possible to get a job before 2012? All 15 of these companies are currently hiring: 1. Ascend Performance Materials Industry: Manufacturing Number of openings: 5...

By Bob Sullivan Their employment prospects are dim, their debt is high, their lives are on hold and a stunning number are living with their parents, even into their 30s. They are young adults, 18 to 34, struggling to begin their adult lives during the worst economy since the Great Depression, and they risk becoming a lost generation, according to an extensive new study released Wednesday by two advocacy groups. While begun long before the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the research may help explain why so many young people are taking part in the protests. Some data unearthed by the study by the advocacy groups Demos and The Young Invincibles, which combined an independent telephone poll with U.S. Census Bureau data, is stark and stunning. Rent is taking up nearly 33 percent more of young adults’ income than a decade ago -- at least for those who have their own place. But nearly 20 percent live with their parents. They are postponing buying a home, having children, even ...

So you already know that the gap between rich and poor has been widening lately . But some new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office put the issue into stark relief. As the chart at right shows, between 1979 and 2007, the share of after-tax income going to each of the bottom four income quintiles--the bottom 80 percent--has dropped. The only quintile that has increased its share is the top 20 percent. And the top 1 percent has more than doubled its share. That top 1 percent saw its income skyrocket by 275 percent. Those between the 80th and 99th percentile--that is, the top 20 percent, excluding the very top 1 percent--also did pretty well, seeing their income rise by 65 percent. Income for the bottom 20 percent, meanwhile, grew by just 18 percent. One reason for the growing gap, the report said, is the impact of government transfer programs. Back in 1979, the poorest 20 percent of the population received 50 percent of all government transfers. By 2007, that had dropped t...

The  survey showing  many American corporations hiring overseas even as unemployment stays at post-Depression highs at home confirms what I've been hearing from readers for some time. They've written that their companies are indeed hiring, but not here. The reasons for the dissonance are complex, but the excuse that overseas markets are recovering while the United States languishes won't provide much comfort. Once upon a time, major companies here were export giants with factories in America. Thus, stronger demand overseas would have meant jobs for Americans. This helped sustain a consensus that trade was a good thing for America. Since the 1980s, more American corporations have moved operations offshore. This has given them closer access to emerging markets and the benefits of much cheaper labor. But many nations, especially China, have demanded that foreign companies set up shop there as the price of admission to the market. Profits still flow back home, but not as many j...

CLEVELAND — Kimberly Smith holds up the piece of paper that is the only thing keeping her from bankruptcy: an application for extended unemployment benefits. She's not happy that she needs it. And she's upset that it was nearly taken away. "I do deserve it," the 49-year-old says. "I've done everything I could to try and get a job. I tried to get back into the retail industry. I made the effort to, at my age, go back to college." President Barack Obama extended unemployment benefits for Smith and millions of other Americans when he signed tax-cut legislation Friday. It helps people who have been out of work more than 26 weeks but less than 99 weeks, though the benefits vary greatly from state to state. They could be just about anybody. People with college degrees and people with no higher education. People who have resorted to living out of their cars. People who have cashed out their retirement  savings . People who once held six-figure jobs and people l...

The Wall Street Journal  reports  that the  extension of  unemployment  benefits   included in Washington's pending tax-cut plan will raise the jobless rate -- chiefly by making people less energetic in looking for work. But the author of the very government study the Journal relies on to make its case tells The Lookout that he believes the opposite is the case. As part of the  deal to preserve the Bush tax cuts for two years , the president and GOP congressional leaders agreed to an extension of jobless benefits for another 13 months. The Journal's Kelly Evans writes that this bodes ill for the jobless rate, pointing to an April study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In that document, Fed economists found that extending benefits at the end of 2009 made unemployment slightly higher than it would otherwise have been. Congressional Republicans have long  argued  against extending benefits on these grounds. As Evans sums it up: "...