In the latest employment statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate remained steady for the third consecutive month at 5.9 percent, according to the Department of Labor.
The federal government is investigating the hiring practices of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Last year, information-technology firms laid off 2.6 million workers and hired 2.1 million. The size of the IT workforce shrank from 10.4 million to 9.9 million. As a result, hundreds of thousands of IT workers are jobless or work in other fields.
The U.S. will lose an estimated 1.64 million jobs this year as a direct result of the attacks of Sept. 11, mostly in industries directly affected by the attacks, such as air transportation, hotels, amusement, and dining, according to a new study.
Economists tell The Christian Science Monitor that more Americans will be out of work, many of the nation's trading partners will be entering a recession, and in spite of all of the above, this year will be better than last.
Though hard numbers on those displaced by the current downturn won't be in for another two years, a trio of researchers believes they'll show that older workers have borne the brunt of layoffs, The New York Times reports.
