Employers

Maryland employers added 5,600 jobs last month, a relatively strong performance, but the state's jobless rate inched up to 4.2 percent anyway, the U.S. Labor Department announced yesterday. Unemployment was 4.1 percent in October. By comparison, the nation's rate was 5 percent both months. The numbers are adjusted for seasonal variations. The state has added 48,900 jobs since November last year, a downshifting since the heady months of early summer, when the annual rate was flirting with 60,000 jobs.

An apprehensive Trina Strohman slowly walked up the steps yesterday toward the College Job Fair of Central Maryland at Towson State University."Is it bad in there?" she asked a passer-by who was leaving the Towson Center. Mrs. Strohman soon will have an accounting certificate from Catonsville Community College and is looking for an entry-level position.She refused to give her age but said she has been out of the work force for 15 years while raising a family. "People don't really want to hire older people," she said.

If you're a college student, you probably need a job for the summer. But the deadline for high-paying (and highly competitive) positions has essentially passed. An unpaid internship is out of the question. What do you do? It's an issue many students will face as summer nears. Those three months offer the opportunity to earn much-needed cash. It's also a critical time to build job skills. "Employers won't look at someone without real-world experience," said Phil Gardner, director of research at the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University.

Last year, Deborah Sheffield figured she had recovered enough from the accident that left her a paraplegic, and wheeled herself around Baltimore looking for jobs.But the 31-year-old former Citibank account representative found herself stymied by staircases, narrow doorways and skeptical interviewers.Across town, Marc Rize, a human relations analyst for Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. was discovering that though BG&E prided itself on its progressive employment of workers with disabilities, people like Ms. Sheffield would still have faced plenty of barriers.

Over the past year, the state has cited 30 employers, a third of them public agencies and schools, including one fire station, for violating safety rules against blocked or locked fire exits."

Many Maryland employers will see the tax they pay for unemployment insurance drop by more than half next year. The tax cut, which will be announced Monday by the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, reflects the improving employment situation in the state and should give businesses a boost as they use that money for other purposes. The unemployment insurance tax soared several years ago as the ranks of the unemployed spiked during the recession, which in turn depleted the state's trust fund for jobless benefits.

The Baltimore and Maryland job markets will deteriorate in the first quarter of next year, with more employers planning to reduce their staff than those planning to hire, a new survey shows.In Baltimore, only 5 percent of the employers surveyed by Manpower Inc., an international temporary employment firm, said they planned to increase their work force next quarter, while 16 percent said they would cut back.The statewide employment picture was a bit less negative. Of about 1,760 employers questioned over the telephone, 17 percent planned a decrease in staffing and 12 percent planned to hire.

A Supreme Court decision that says employers cannot be forced to hire disabled people for jobs that could put their health at risk is unlikely to significantly weaken the Americans with Disabilities Act, legal experts said yesterday. In a unanimous decision yesterday, the court ruled that employers could refuse to hire people whose disabilities would endanger them on the job. The case, which involved a former Chevron refinery worker, is the latest in a series of rulings against employees who have sued under the act, which bars job discrimination against the disabled.

CHICAGO - Low-quality health care in the United States is costing nearly $400 billion a year, about 30 percent of the total $1.3 trillion annual medical expenditures in the nation, according to a study to be released today in Chicago. Medical errors and unnecessary treatments to misused drugs and bureaucratic waste - new research suggests such problems compromise quality medical care and each year cost private employers $1,700 to $2,000 per insured worker. The findings in a study commissioned by the Chicago-based Midwest Business Group on Health come as employers are wrestling with soaring health-care costs.

U.S. and state labor officials will cut the ribbon Thursday on a new workforce center for job seekers and employers. The Laurel Regional Workforce Center, intended to help people in Anne Arundel, Howard, Prince George's and Montgomery counties, will help workers with job searches and connect them to training. Businesses can get assistance finding employees. The center, at 312 Marshall Ave., will draw from a larger area than county workforce centers in an effort to make more connections in a region that has high levels of cross-commuting.