Temporary Becomes Permanent in the Workplace

Link to December 20 New York Times article, "Weighing Costs, Companies Favor Temporary Help".

Excerpt: Temporary workers are starting to look, well, not so temporary.

Despite a surge this year in short-term hiring, many American businesses are still skittish about making those jobs permanent, raising concerns among workers and some labor experts that temporary employees will become a larger, more entrenched part of the work force.

This is bad news for the nation’s workers, who are already facing one of the bleakest labor markets in recent history. Temporary employees generally receive fewer benefits or none at all, and have virtually no job security. It is harder for them to save. And it is much more difficult for them to develop a career arc while hopping from boss to boss.

Some of the numbers:
November 2010.  50,000 private-sector jobs added; 80% temporary.
2010 to date.  1,170,000 private-sector jobs added; 307,000 temporary.
15,000,000 people out of work.

Lots more here:

and here.

Charles Portis is Not Ready for his Close-Up

Link to December 20 New York Times article, "True Grit, Odd Wit: And Fame? No Thanks".

Excerpt: He’s not a Pynchonesque recluse, exactly. He is occasionally spotted in Little Rock, Ark., where he has lived for 50-odd years; he even went to a gala sponsored there recently by the Oxford American, a literary magazine, and consented to receive a lifetime achievement award, though he sat in the 14th row, or as far from the stage as he could. But Mr. Portis doesn’t use e-mail, has an unlisted phone number, declines interview requests, including one for this article, and shuns photographs with the ardor of a fugitive in the witness protection program. He hasn’t published a novel in nearly 20 years.

[snip]

“True Grit,” Mr. Portis’s second novel, which was serialized by The Saturday Evening Post and appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for 22 weeks, is actually a divisive matter among Portis admirers. There are some, like the novelist Donna Tartt, who consider it his masterpiece, a work comparable to “Huckleberry Finn.” Others, like Mr. Rosenbaum, resent “True Grit” a little for detracting attention from Mr. Portis’s lesser-known but arguably funnier books: “Norwood” (1966), “The Dog of the South” (1979), “Masters of Atlantis” (1985) and “Gringos” (1991). The writer Roy Blount Jr., an old friend of Mr. Portis’s, suggested recently that Mr. Portis himself was a little embarrassed by the success of “True Grit.”


Back in demand.

Johns Hopkins Report: "Building a Grad Nation"

Link to full report.

Link to December 20 Fond du Lac Reporter article, "Report: More students graduating from high school in Wisconsin".

Excerpt: A new report says Wisconsin has made substantial gains in its statewide high school graduation rate.

A study of graduation rates from 2002 to 2008, done in part by Johns Hopkins University, highlights Wisconsin as a state that has made notable progress.

The state’s rate in 2008 was nearly 90 percent. In 2002, it was almost 85 percent.

The federal government has set a national goal that schools graduate nine out of every 10 students by the year 2020.