General Labor Issues

WASHINGTON—Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su defended her record at the start of a confirmation hearing Thursday, as she seeks to gain Senate approval to lead the department. President Biden picked Ms. Su for the cabinet post earlier this year. She was confirmed to take the No. 2 position at the Labor Department in 2021, but confirmation for the top job isn’t assured in the closely divided Senate. Some Democrats haven’t said whether they would support her. Ms. Su needs near universal support from Mr.…

Ask a co-worker that most mundane of questions—How’s it going?—and brace yourself. You might get a real answer.  The pandemic made many of us more comfortable talking about our mental health at work, surveys show. Feeling less pressure to act like we’ve got it all together, some people now swap struggles with burnout and impostor syndrome almost as freely as they talk about sore joints after a weekend 5k.  Ask a co-worker that most mundane of questions—How’s it going?—and brace yourself.…

PARIS—Once a month, Bernard Arnault gathers his children for lunch inside a private dining room at the headquarters of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, his globe-spanning luxury goods company. The meal, which lasts exactly 90 minutes, begins with the French billionaire reading aloud discussion topics he has prepared on his iPad, according to people close to him. Mr. Arnault then goes around the table, asking each of his five adult children for advice. He’ll seek an opinion on specific managers at…

Part-timers and weekend drivers are expected to be among the key points of debate as the Teamsters and United Parcel Service Inc. begin talks this week on the largest collective bargaining agreement in the U.S. The parcel-delivery industry has changed since the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and UPS last signed a five-year agreement in 2018. UPS and rival FedEx Corp. have become more focused in recent years on delivering more profitable packages rather than increasing volume.…

Hospitals are joining the gig economy.  Some of the nation’s largest hospital systems including Providence and Advocate Health are using apps similar to ride-hailing technology to attract scarce nurses. An app from ShiftKey lets workers bid for shifts. Another, CareRev, helps hospitals adjust pay to match supply, lowering rates for popular shifts and raising them to entice nurses to work overnight or holidays. Hospitals are joining the gig economy.  Some of the nation’s largest…

No pressure, but your résumé has six seconds to make an impression before it is sent to the don’t-even-bother pile.That is how long a recruiter typically skims a résumé to decide whether to pass it on to a hiring manager, said J.T. O’Donnell, chief executive of career-coaching site Work It Daily. Recruiters often have hundreds of online applications to wade through, even with algorithms helping filter many of them out. They will likely give yours little more than a glance to judge whether you make it onto the shortlist of…

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By historical standards, the labor market remains remarkably strong. Payroll growth last month clocked in above 230,000, more than double what was once considered normal. The unemployment rate, at 3.5%, stayed near its lowest in more than 50 years.  Several crosscurrents are at work beneath the surface, and a closer look suggests the labor market is cooling quite rapidly. And yet it hasn’t cooled enough for the Federal Reserve to conclude inflation is going to fall back to its 2% target. So while labor demand hasn’t…

Being young and ambitious right now often means proving that you can be both of those things at the same time.That applies even to 25-year-old Charu Thomas, who earned an engineering degree in 3½ years after completing high school in three years. She founded supply-chain software firm Ox at age 18, raised $3.5 million in funding and, in 2020, made it onto Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list.  Yet in a breakfast with investors in the fall, she said they wanted to discuss “quiet quitting” and the motivation of younger…

The idea came to Johnny Taylor Jr. early last year, after one of his employees made a case that her technology position could be done anywhere. She wanted to leave Virginia, where she held a job at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association based in Alexandria. She asked to work remotely in North Carolina. “Then a lightbulb went off,” said Mr. Taylor, the association’s chief executive. Instead of having the employee work in another state, he…