Six presidential candidates, all of them Democrats, will be in Las Vegas this weekend to talk about labor in a state whose unions still wield a lot of power.
Like many employers, Belden couldn't find enough workers for its Indiana factory. So it started a first-of-its-kind program which pays for drug treatment to job applicants failing drug tests.
It says last year, 10.1 percent of the workforce was independent contractors, down from 10.7 percent in 2005. Those figures appear to go against other surveys showing huge growth in contract work.
An NPR/Marist poll shows 65 percent of contract workers are men and 62 percent are under 45. Contract workers gain flexibility, but when business goes down, they're often the first to be fired.
New immigrants are projected to be the main driver of the U.S. workforce over the next 20 years. That trend is already playing out in Maine, which has an aging white population with a low birth rate.
The chairman of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance will be working at both ends of the state this month to argue that a better-prepared workforce would be a catalyst for new business developmen
Some firms use motion sensors and wireless tags to find out how people actually work. That can yield useful data — like which free snacks tend to attract people to break rooms more than others.
