Labor Force

Culling resumes worst part of hiring, executives say Hiring is hardly simple in most fields, but what's the trickiest part? Reviewing resumes to ferret out the best candidates, said 34 percent of executives in a survey. Posing the proper interview questions was the second-most-difficult task, given by 27 percent, and salary negotiation was next. "Many executives receive hundreds of resumes in response to classified ads, for example, and may feel overwhelmed," said Tracey Fuller, executive director of The Creative Group.

Maryland employers added 2,000 jobs in February, but unemployment inched upward as the labor force swelled, the Labor Department said yesterday. The jobless rate rose to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent in January, adjusted for the effect of seasonal variations. That remains well below the national unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. The strongest Maryland industries during the month of February were leisure and hospitality; professional and business services; and trade, transportation and utilities.

Harford County is in the midst of an economic boom, and much of the credit goes to its leading the state in job growth last year. "Harford County's job growth was sensational last year," said Anirban Basu, chief executive of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore-based economic consultant firm. The county posted a 6.7 percent increase in its labor force, which equated to 4,713 jobs. "Things are changing in Harford," said Basu. "Until the early 1990s, it was viewed as a sleepy bedroom community of Baltimore that had Aberdeen Proving Ground but not much more."

HOLLYWOOD -- A labor dispute at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City left Hollywood producers scrambling to find other venues to stage their annual black-tie awards shows. The Producers Guild of America, which had scheduled its show at the hotel for Jan. 22, found a last-minute reprieve when the new owners of Culver Studios offered one of its large sound stages for the producers' dinner as well as its historic New York street on the back lot for guests to mingle and drink cocktails before and after the show.

The threat of police picket lines is altering plans for Maryland Democrats heading to Boston for next week's presidential nominating convention and could force tough choices for Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and other delegates. Maryland delegates joined those from several other states yesterday in canceling a welcoming reception to be hosted by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The Democrat has been embroiled in a labor dispute with city police, who received a permit to picket the event at the Boston Children's Museum.

Maryland maintained its enviable unemployment rate of 4 percent last month, helped in large part by the creation of 9,500 jobs. At the same time, about 4,100 people joined the labor force, some of whom probably returned after dropping out in discouragement during the recession, economists speculated. Employers in the state have added 22,800 jobs this year, a big improvement over the 2,100 lost during the first four months of last year, when the economy was in the doldrums, the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said yesterday.

U.S. employment barely budged last month, an economic problem for the 8.2 million people out of work and a political predicament for a president who doesn't want to end up in the same situation. About 21,000 jobs were created in February, the Labor Department said yesterday, a sixth the size of economists' forecasts. The unemployment rate remained at 5.6 percent as 392,000 people dropped out of the labor force, just as the presidential campaign kicked into high gear. The Labor Department, which originally estimated an increase of 112,000 jobs in January, also revised that number downward, to 97,000.

Recruitment executive Jon Davis is seeing the first signs of a recovery in the job market, but most of the employers he talks with aren't looking for full-time workers. They want contractors - independent workers who are paid by the assignment. "I would say there are more employers today than there were in the past that like the flexibility of a contingent work force," said Davis, branch manager in Dallas for Matrix Resources, an Atlanta-based technology placement firm. The rising cost of supporting a full-time work force, diminishing worker-employer loyalty and the proliferation of technology are contributing to what may be a permanent shift away from the traditional employment model.

A slight improvement in unemployment numbers last month concealed the dismaying fact that businesses cut 93,000 jobs across the nation - the largest loss in five months and a sign that the economy has yet to recover in the way that matters most to workers. America's unemployment rate dipped to 6.1 percent from 6.2 percent in July, but the ranks of out-of-work people too discouraged to seek new jobs swelled to 503,000, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics released yesterday.

The number of Americans out of work dropped slightly last month, but economists said it wasn't necessarily an indication that finding a job has gotten any easier. The U.S. unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July, down from a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in June. But the number of people in the labor force shrank by 556,000 to 146 million, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. About 470,000 people simply stopped looking for work out of fear that they wouldn't find anything, economists said.