ABC Online:

A regular survey by the ANZ Bank shows that in January there was a recovery of only 4.3 per cent in newspaper job advertisements after a 12.5 per cent slump in December.

But ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake says they are still suggestive of some slowing in employment growth. "The most obvious factor giving rise to hesitancy on the part of employers about creating new jobs would be the heightened geopolitical uncertainty associated with the seemingly growing risk of another military conflict in the Middle East."

Labor markets factor risk into supply, demand, and pricing. Just like securities markets.

[a klog apart staffing]

via HR Gateway

The gap between the highest and lowest paid in the UK continues to grow pushing the gender gap wider also.

A two-tier workforce is growing in the UK with pay for top earners growing quicker than the rest of the workforce, according to new figures released today.

Two-thirds of workers now earn under the national average gross weekly income of £465, claims the Income Data Services (IDS) report, with pay for top earners booming over the past decade.

‘The average earnings figure has been pulled upwards, leaving a growing majority of full-time employees below the average. This trend has been particularly strong since 1997,' states the report.

Analysing the growing disparity of earnings in Britain, the report shows that, in the past decade, earnings of the top 10% of employees have climbed by nearly 54%, while the lowest 10% of full-time workers have seen their earnings rise by just 45.6%.

In the past 12 years the percentage of workers earning under the national average weekly gross has grown from 61.2% to 64.6%, with the largest year on year jump of one per cent coming between 2001-2002.

What are the characteristics that separate the two groups? Parental income? How much parental income? Region? School? How much and what types? What factors go along with race and gender?

Can you still promise upward mobility through education and hard work? How do you make education more attractive than soccer and professional wrestling?

Can neurological sciences develop pills and potions to increase your value in the labor market? Make you smarter, stronger, more alert, happier? Endurance to work longer?

What happens to a society when the rich get richer? Are UK political parties aligned along paycheck?

Is this split true in the U.S. and other industrial nations too?

[a klog apart shortage watch]

Before you hire perm, you hire temp then contract. Hedging risk until you're confident in the business cycle.

UK tech reporter Robert Faletra writes that headhunters lead the way to recovery. He's been getting recruiters calling him for referrals again after a two year lapse.  

Adecco SA reports full year 2002 revenues of CHF 25.1 billion, income before amortisation of CHF 362 million,

Adecco's been doing well across all divisions, all their big regions. 

Their jobpilot e-HR division, still nascent, earned $5 million 4th quarter revenue and $15 million for the year following the purchase of the jobpilot job board. While this rounding error in an $18 billion business isn't a big deal, it's nice that the online projects are probably covering their expenses.

The challenges:

What will it take for online business to contribute 1 percent of revenues and cash flow?

What will it take for online to improve a branch's profitability 5 percent?

What will it take for online to let Adecco US grow 30 percent over three years without adding personnel?

What will it take for the online business to differentiate Adecco from competitors?

What will content, experiences and value will it take so workers volunteer to spend an hour a week online at Adecco?

Andy King's new book is out. Web Site Optimization.

Not for normal bloggers.

Site designers. HTML and CSS template designers. Javascript coders. Photoshoppers. Marketing folks. People who pay hosting bills (mediabloggers). People who care about the cost of servers, rackmounts, and webapp scalability.

My traffic went up when I followed these principles. I need to do it again (darn it) so pages load fast on a dial-up and so my site feels fast enough to be interactive. I didn't know you could optimize CSS but it should have been obvious that you can optimize JavaScript.

Dear CIO/CTO, optimize when things are quiet because you won't have time when things pick up.  

By the author of one of the first news aggregators.

Do you know your stuff?

Peoplesoft functional consultant.

Need functional resources in the areas of Sales and Marketing with hands-on experience implementing PeopleSoft 8.4. Multiple implementation are preferable. Hands on development/configuration experience is critical, but also must be able to interface with business resources. Additionally, any hands-on experience with Annuncio/Online marketing would be a plus.

Needs to have experience with the Peoplesoft Sales and Marketing module on version 8.0 and newer.

6-12+ month contract Include your hourly pay rate.

The rate will depend upon experience.

East Bay location.

• Requirements: Peoplesoft SFA v8.4, CRM, Sales, Marketing
• Travel required: 00%
• Telecommute: no

Contact Brian Wang, brian@elegantconsulting.com, Send me your resume. Arrange a call to answer any questions.

You couldn't ask for a better project lead than Brian. Let me know how it goes.

My friend is hiring two Javaheads. 

• Candidates must have secret clearances and have J2EE developer experience (3-5 years) and Oracle Application Server experience. Need 2 people who can start quickly.
  • J2EE
  • Oracle application server
  • Active Secret Security Clearance!!
• Does not need to be on H1.
• Must have the clearance and the 3-5 years of J2EE and Oracle application server experience.
• Rate very competitive. Depends on experience.
• Location: Cambridge, Mass.

I've been reading about a few bloggers moving off of manila or Radio. Here's the basic formula for when to switch.

When you add up the:

• Current value of my blogging tool
• Expected value of the stream of improvements to my blogging tool
• Cost of switching

And find it is less than the:

• Current value of an alternative tool
• Expected value of the stream of improvements to the alternative tool

Then it will be time to move.

Every product manager faces this formula.

Dave Winer leaving UserLand is a blow to the future value of the product. His radar for novel technologies and software architectures kept exciting new features coming every month for years.

One of John Robb's challenges: making and keeping the promise of an exciting and valuable future for the product family.

Blogpocket is introducing the world of programming and object oriented principles for absolute newbies in its BIAP seccion. En español.

BIAP, blogpocket en una caja de pastillas, es la sección de blogpocket dedicada a la divulgación de la programación de ordenadores y orientada a principiantes.

The blog form fits this tutorial function. A conversational style overcomes student fear. The small chunks makes subjects approachable (and easier to compose). And the weblog means students can post questions, email the reader, and meet other students. I'd have loved to have a blooging tool back when I did curriculum development for Compaq.

Sandwiched between a rock and a hard place
Jobless man sees plight as sign of the times
San Francisco Chronicle
Feb 2 2003 5:52AM ET

"I really believe we're heading into another worldwide Great Depression, and I don't see anything being done to change that direction," says Weiss. "Sept. 11 was our 1929."

"When I was a kid, the old-timers said they survived because people helped each other. We're going to have to learn to do that again."

The Bush Depression.