Employers Ghosted by Workers, Lifelong Learning, the Implications of the Worker Shortage, and more

As the holiday bustle gets into full swing, we’re putting an Alaant spin on a classic. ‘Twas the night before the job interview, when all through my house. They could tell I was nervous, just ask my spouse! My best dress clothes were hung in my closet with care…

Economists report that workers are starting to act like millennials on Tinder: They’re ditching jobs with nary a text. “A number of contacts said that they had been ‘ghosted,’ a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in December’s Beige Book, which tracks employment trends.

The U.S technology sector recorded another strong month for employment growth in November, adding an estimated 13,500 new jobs, according to an analysis by CompTIA, the leading technology industry association. As has been the case throughout the year, job growth was led by new hiring in IT services, custom software development and computer system design. An estimated 7,600 jobs were added in the category last month.

Workers without high school degrees haven't had the easiest time finding a job. But now, the strong labor market is lifting workers who never earned their high school or GED diploma, providing them with the best chances of scoring a job in at least a decade. In October, the unemployment rate for workers without high school degrees stood at 6 percent, compared with a decade-long high of almost 16 percent in February 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The work landscape our children are entering today looks nothing like what our parents experienced. The notion of working for the same firm for your whole career is a distant memory, and anyone whose career trajectory looks that way is considered an outlier. Today, workers are expected to hold many different jobs throughout their careers, and technology will change what it takes to succeed in each role…

U.S. job openings rebounded in October, but hiring continued to lag, suggesting a recent slowdown in job growth was most likely because employers could not find qualified workers. The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released by the Labor Department on Monday underscored tightening labor market conditions, which economists say will encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next week despite volatility in financial markets.