Factories are expected to being ramping up hiring in the second half of the year depsite a slowdown in production demand, in order to spur the jobs market.

The seemingly contradictory trends are occurring because existing workers have been pushed to their limits with overtime. As a result, more workers will  be hired to ease the burden, says Dan Mecksroth, chief economist of researcher Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI.

The forecast for manufacturers the rest of the year could become clearer today when the Institute for Supply Management releases its report on factory activity for July. Economists estimate the industry grew again last month but at a slower pace than early this year, continuing a recent trend.

Another report out today from the majority staff of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee shows factory job gains, in addition to high tech jobs in network security in 2010 largely have been in durable goods such as trucks, metals and machinery, rather than consumer products. The uneven rebound has mostly benefited states such as Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.

Durable goods makers are adding jobs largely because they cut so severely in the recession as carmakers, construction firms and factories virtually stopped ordering metals, machines and other heavy-duty products. Inventories fell so low they had to increase purchases starting last year, igniting a manufacturing rebound.

After slashing nearly 2 million jobs from June 2006 to last December, durable goods makers have added 130,000 jobs this year, the JEC study says. The hiring largely has benefited states that make transportation equipment and metals. Ohio, for example,

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My Take: Job seekers, whether you’re hoping to find work as consumer rights lawyers, CPAs in Denver, or  Texas medical malpractice attorneys in Dallas, you can get help putting your name in front of firms that are hiring.  A good executive search firm will know the ins and outs of every business sector, what they are looking for, the pay scale and odds of your getting hired, whether  you interview for a top slot with a firm of FCRA attorneys or with a Texas car accident law firm.

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Other Resources

Divorce Options

Divorce litigation attorney fees are not cheap.  You may want to consider the services of an  Bergen County divorce mediator, or if you outside New Jersey, consult the online pages for divorce mediators in your local area.

Arizona Foreclosure Search

Phoenix home buyers are taking full advantage of the foreclosure market. While the city may not be experiencing the degree of foreclosures other states like California and Nevada are, Phoenix AZ realtors are jumping the short-sale and quick-sale market by pushing buyers toward homes that have been in default.  These are great bargains for many first-time buyers, but be warned: the process of buying a foreclosure takes time due to wrangling with the banks and sometimes the occupants in the home who haven’t quite moved out yet.

Promotional Gift Baskets

Everyone knows that promotional gifts are important tools for advertising a company and getting its message across to the intended audience. But how exactly does a corporate gift basket help in the promotion of a company?  Custom gourmet gift baskets are not the usual promotional item in many ways, especially in the value and price of these items. Promotional items are usually given out to the public in hopes that the business will be promoted to new, potential clients. Although these promotional items attract potential customers, they may not be ideal gifts to give to long-time clients.  Gourmet Shiva gift baskets are ideal gifts for those long-term clients.

SOURCE:   CNN Money

You’ve heard of cat-sitters, dog-sitters and, of course, babysitters. But chicken-sitters?

Two backyard farmers have stepped up to meet an unusual need in Portland Oregan: hen sitting for vacationing owners, and we don’t mean on the eggs.

In May, Rhonda Piasecki, 43, and Sharon Rowland, 35, launched Just Us Hens, which they believe is the nation’s first chicken-sitting service. The business partners, who each boast a full roost of laying hens (four for Piasenki; eight for Rowland), met last year working at Portland’s Urban Farm Store.

“At the store, you’d just talk people’s ears off about chickens,” says Piasecki, who is also a drummer for Klickitat, a local jazz-rock band.

But the seed the store sells started to aggravate Piasecki’s asthma, right around the same time that Rowland decided she wanted to spend more time with her 3-year-old, chicken-loving son Sterling. A friend suggested that Piasecki become a “chicken consultant,” while Rowland’s husband floated the idea of seeking out hen-sitting gigs.

So the women teamed up to offer a slate of services: $15 per visit for hen sitting, $25 for hen health house calls and $50 an hour for consultations on urban agriculture. In late May, they launched a blog, followed by a full website in early July. They also publicized their services at Portland’s online chicken chat group, PDXBackyardChix, which has more than 1,000 members.

The fledgling company has only a handful of customers. But as word passes through Portland’s substantial population of urban hen keepers, they hope Just Us Hens will take off.

There’s certainly an audience for it. Chickens are all the rage in Portland, where longstanding city regulations allow residents to keep up to three of them — but no roosters — without a permit. Even Mayor Sam Adams has a brood: three hens, all named Alma. (Adams let his chief of staff’s daughter, Alma, pick the names.) Hundreds of chicken enthusiasts will turn out on Saturday for Portland’s seventh annual Tour de Coops, a self-guided stroll through 25 backyard hen houses, including the mayor’s own.

One of Just Us Hens’ first customers was Renee Wrede, a nurse in Southwest Portland who worried about what would become of her new flock when she and her family took a beach vacation. Rowland signed on to watch “the girls”: two barred Plymouth Rock hens, one Ameraucana, one Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and one Welsumer.

During daily visits, Rowland fussed over Poppy, Hyacinth and the other chickens, holding and petting each one. After she fed and watered them, she emailed Wrede to report on how the birds were faring in her absence.

Wrede was thrilled and says the service exceeded her expectations.

“We do have a house-sitter, but she has no idea about chickens,” Wrede explains. Rowland, on the other hand, was hard-working expert: “She even scooped the poop!”

The proprietors of Just Us Hens pride themselves on creative problem-solving. “We welcome weird situations,” Rowland says.

Piasecki has developed a homegrown solution for a common poultry problem: hens plucking their own feathers. She located a chicken-loving seamstress in Arkansas, who she claims is the nation’s best source for chicken aprons. The aprons run $7.50 apiece and can be draped over the chickens’ problem areas. “They fit perfectly!” she says.

Just Us Hens isn’t the only chicken-related business to take flight in recent years. Katy Skinner, of Yacolt, Wash., runs The City Chicken, an online clearinghouse of chicken-keeping wisdom.

She’s seen entrepreneurs make money selling prefabricated coops or coop blueprints, as well as giving classes and lectures. But hen-sitting? Even for a seasoned chicken guru, that’s something new.

“This is the first I’ve heard of a hen-sitting service,” she says. “I hope they get a lot of business!” 

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My Take:  I’ve got friends who, since losing their full time jobs in the last few years have started all kinds of small businesses to survive, selling imprinted school T shirts, running Key West fishing charters and providing in-home cold laser therapy for injuries and beauty treatments, like pedicures and manicures.

Apparently there’s a big market for promotional products freelance sales reps, although I don’t know if that’s something a couple of urban farmers would relate to, anymore than I guess they’d be interested in providing laser treatment in homes.  But maybe running Key West Florida sport fishing trips wouldn’t be that far off the mark.

Either way, I think it’s great that these two ladies saw a need for something and are willing to provide it.  I hope the chicken craze never ends.  It’s awesome to have fresh eggs for breakfast and hens make great pets! 

Other Resources:

Number Crunchers
A good Bergen County tax preparer  can work for you as a skilled negotiator if you have tax problems.   Your  Bergen County CPA is able to provide skilled representation for you in cases involving the IRS or State, and the sooner you have a qualified CPA working for you the better your chances of a positive outcome.

Cover Yourself
Lowcost auto insurance quotes are not as hard to find as you may think.  If you are looking for a car insurance quote you might want to start with this video. It tells you everything you need to know ahead of time before accepting a quote.  Click here and watch.

The fascination people have with social media from Tweeter to FaceBook is becoming a problem in the workplace.  Many managers are trying to deal with that reality and the question they face is how to deal with it.  Many say that acceptance is the first to, however what is the second step?

Striking a healthy balance for the use of social media at work means creating expectations for appropriate behavior, say small business owners and others responsible for policy.

“It’s free to get started and anybody can do it,” says Chris Boudreaux, the creator of Social Media Governance, a website that is aggregating data about corporate social media policy to aid business leaders in managing social media use at their companies.. “You’re really in a position where you need to support these people … rather than fight the tide.”

In many cases, the work regulations dictating interaction in the fast-changing world of virtual communities appear to be a reflection of overall corporate culture, Boudreaux, a product development specialist, says.

His site has collected information on more than 80 organizations, including companies such as Cisco Systems, FedEx, and Microsoft, as well as universities, hospitals and other nonprofits. Often companies are taking a reactive approach “to protect themselves against a potential downside,” says Boudreaux.

It’s clear why when news of abuse abounds. Among the most disturbing was an incident at Domino’s Pizza in April. The restaurant chain faced a public relations crisis after employees at a Conover, N.C. location decided to film a prank replete with health code violations and post it on the video-sharing site YouTube.

For those who do not want to use Tweeter or FaceBook to make their announcements . . . Why not let one vendor help you celebrate some credible locations with beautiful archival custom birth announcements?  For that matter, but the personal back into personal marriage announcements or even baby announcements.  That is the one thing about the Internet that many people have forgotten.  It takes away the personal touch.  But the personal touch back in your announcements and invitations now.

But despite such concerns, the businesses that may prove most successful in leveraging social media for sales development, marketing, education and informational purposes may be those that take a proactive approach to the benefits of use rather than erecting barriers, Boudreaux says.

Small companies, often recognized for their lack of bureaucracy and adaptable nature, may be particularly adept at gleaning the valuable contacts and other business resources that online communities offer. To do so, they are emphasizing acceptable uses of social media in the workplace.

“I am encouraged that people understand how to use it,” says Larry Burns, CEO of StartSampling Inc., a Carol Stream, Illinois-based digital marketing services company that develops Internet campaigns offering free samples on behalf of consumer companies. “If (employees) are involved in the creation of promotional activities for our customers, they need to understand what this space is.”

StartSampling has updated its corporate handbook to include social media guidelines and holds regular seminars for its 55 employees on topics such as maintaining the confidentiality of client information when interacting online. Sales people are expected to participate in communities such as LinkedIn.

“It’s a balance, a difficult balance,” says Burns, noting concerns about liability amid the free flow of information. “Most organizations are already not in control of this. My suggestion would be to educate folks as to what is and is not appropriate behavior.”

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

Sharlyn Lauby, president of Internal Talent Management, a Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based human resources consulting firm, believes in positive reinforcement. In many cases, other standards for communication at a company, such as those that govern personal use of the telephone and email, can lay a foundation, she says.

“Instead of talking about all the things you can’t do – talk about what you can do,” Lauby says. “It’s about talking with people and engaging in conversation. Train your employees.”

Andy Dunn, the 30-year-old CEO of Bonobos, a New York-based online start-up dedicated to selling men’s pants on the Internet, allows his staff to self-regulate social media use, which has been critical to the company’s development.

Dunn doesn’t fret if employees, who often work long hours, use downtime to check in with their friends on Facebook; it becomes readily apparent who is spending too much time on personal pursuits if work results fall short of expectations.

“We’re actually encouraging the use of these tools,” he says. “We communicate with our customers on Facebook and Twitter all the time.”

Bonobos is not alone. Fresh data from a survey conducted by the business-oriented Web directory Business.com suggests that small to mid-sized companies may be outpacing their larger-company rivals in the use of social media to search for and find business-related information.

“Small businesses are always under pressure to find ways to compete, to find ways of gathering information,” he says. “They’re more open to new ways of communicating, new ways of doing research, new information sources that may help them do more in less time.”

In September, a poll was taken that had 2264 North American businesses participate that had fewer than 100 employees.  The results have not yet been released.  But it is possible that the results may indicate that he is right.

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My Take: Social media, such as Tweeter and FaceBook, maybe great for advertising and taking surveys.  However, I do not think that an employee should be Twittering or talking on FaceBook while at work.  Now if they are doing something contacted with work that would be different.

The problem that I see showing up in the future is an employee needing to contact a NY Long Island harassment lawyer because they are harassed for something they said online.  Of course, you also have that employer will fire someone for doing something like this and saying it was not work related and then that former employee will need a NYC severance pay lawyer.  There are just so many legal problems that could be caused by this.

I have heard that when chat rooms first arrived on the Internet that they caused all kinds of problems including divorces.  I can definitely see Tweeter or FaceBook causing someone to need a divorce lawyer because they are so addictive.  I can just imagine, family lawyers being called into court because one spouse or the both had an online affair with someone on Tweeter or FaceBook.  I think the judge just might laugh them out of court.

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Related Resources

Online Legal Rights

Let’s face it, new laws are being written every day to offset crimes in person and on the Internet and being arrested, whether for online crimes, juvenile crimes, shoplifting, or simple traffic ticket violations, can be an alarming experience.  Of course, a Freehold NJ DUI attorney may not be able to with help you Internet crimes.  Being afraid, and with your future exposed, an arrest and conviction in a court of law can have a devastating effect on your reputation and your finances, not to mention the potential impact on your work and family life.  A Monmouth County criminal defense lawyer can help.

Business and School Supplies

One company serves the needs of local schools, institutions, hospitals and corporations providing dry erase boards, display cases, folding chairs and whiteboards.  The term whiteboard is also used metaphorically to refer to features of computer software applications that simulate whiteboards. Virtual whiteboards allow one or more people to write or draw images on a simulated canvas. This is a common feature of many virtual meeting, collaboration, and instant messaging applications. Today, the term white board is also used to refer to interactive whiteboards.  Of course, magnetic whiteboards cannot be virtual whiteboards but they can be custom made in multiple sections to accommodate elevators or doorways.