episode 05 discussion

1.	There is no single labor market in the United States. There are many, many markets. That makes gathering information difficult. There are a variety of sources for job information on the Web. Go to America's Job Bank and click on the "Career Infonet" link. What can you find out about the type of job you are interested in, and the part of the country where you would like to work? What are the current salaries? What are the educational demands for the job?

2.	Go to the section of the Bureau of Labor Statistics site that deals with computer programmers. What personal attributes are employers looking for in computer programmers? What attributes do you think would be most important at CanGo? Are there many part-time computer programming jobs? Are there many contract jobs? If so, CanGo's holiday rush could be met with part-time employees.

3.	CanGo is concerned about its workers' productivity levels. We hear that the use of computers and the Internet are making people more productive. Is this true? Try going to the Bureau of Labor Statistics "Quarterly Labor Productivity" page. There are lots of productivity and unit cost figures at this site. Take one of them, e.g., "Business Output per Hour," and study the trends over the past decade. What do you see? Does productivity generally go up? Down? Up and down?

4.	CanGo is thinking of hiring temporary workers to meet its holiday rush. Another option might be to contract out the work to an outside company. From a productivity standpoint, what advantages would outside contracting have over utilizing in-house temporary employees? Are there any?

5.	Hiring temporary workers to meet the holiday rush seems like the way to go at CanGo. What are the pros and cons of temporary employment from the workers' standpoint? Is there a downside? Do temporary workers get the same compensation as full-time workers? Go to the United Automobile Workers of America Web site. Do a search at the site for "temporary workers." What do you find? What seems to be the UAW's position?

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