Job Hunting? A career change may be in order

With unemployment figures skyrocketing and businesses biting the dust, the picture painted is of a long-term crisis and much hardship if not anxiety for many of us. The promise of at least a partial recovery with the incoming administration notwithstanding, there are even today bright patches in the darkened sky.

A closely watched media reveals that optimism, as reports emerge on careers and industries where jobs are largely available or even go begging. Securing them will likely require a change of career, maybe even some training, but there is no question that, yes indeed, there are growth industries today.

We've posted on our career page a helpful article published last week in the Wall Street Journal. And I recommend that you find WNYC's Brian Lehrer show of the 23rd, Dec., or the podcast (Where the Jobs Are).

One of Brian's guests, Dennis Demp, author of Health Care Job Explosion, reports informatively and optimistically on those specific industries that can't help but grow. Health care, insurance and working for the feds (especially in the areas of IT, public health, the census) are examples that he expands on. Demp also gives us the useful website: Federaljobs.net.

Check it out. Happy hunting! And may 2009 be brighter for us all.

PRLDEF petitions that the US fails to protect Latinos

17th December, 2008

Greetings!

Today, LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, charging the United States with failing to protect its Latino residents. The petition alleges human rights violations against the United States, through a procedure rarely used against this country.

Please read on for more information about our petition. If you are a member of a civil rights group or Latino organization, we ask that you consider joining us as co-petitioners or by submitting evidence to the IACHR in support of the petition. Read the rest of the story below then check our website at www.latinojustice.org.

Is Hilda Solis Obama's Most Solid Cabinet Pick?

Just when I was about to note that folks like Barack's Latino cabinet choices, Bill Richardson at Commerce, Ken Salazar at the Interior--Richardson's father was a WASP banker and Salazar's ranching family's been here for 150 years, tracing their lineage to 12th century Spain, not that there's anything wrong with that--were the reasons for the neologism, non-Hispanic whites, and ask where the "real" Latinos were, those sons and daughters of mojados, of Cubans off the Mariel, indios from the altiplano, or Afro-Ricans, along comes Hilda Solis, the real deal on her way to expand the rights of the natural-born and immigrants at the Department of Labor. (Solis has been a champion of the environment as well.)
Not only is Solis the daughter of immigrants--Mexican/Nicaraguan--but she's one of 8 kids and a product of solid working class values.
An Angelina, the LA Times proudly zones in on their homie.

Pew Hispanic Center Study on Latinos and the Recession

Now that it's official that the recession began in 2007--as if we workers and consumers didn't already know and feel it--the Pew Hispanic Center has been able to compile figures on Latino job loss over the past year. As yet, however, there are no complete figures breaking down the losses along white and blue collar lines, although the native-born Hispanic unemployment rate is 9.6%, considerably higher than the national average of 6.4%, while that of foreign-born Hispanics, who we must assume would be more blue collar, is only 6.1%. Interesting read.
Here's the summary.