Economy Watchers Glowing After Plentiful May Job Creation

June 4, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Domestic employment market watchers got lots to smile about Friday when the government announced that the job creation machine was in high gear in May with 248,000 new non-farm positions.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) said May’s healthy total followed an upwardly revised total of 346,000 jobs added in April and 353,000 in March. By tacking on a whopping 947,000 new jobs in the March to May period, those three months became the strongest job-creation quarter in four years.

The government also said the unemployment rate remained at 5.6% in May, unchanged from April.

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Virtually every major sector of the economy added jobs in May, from retailing to construction industries. Particularly notable were 32,000 new hires in the important manufacturing sector – a fourth straight monthly increase and the biggest for any month since August 1998 when 143,000 manufacturing jobs were created, the department said.

House OKs Reemployment Account Measure

June 3, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that would create personal reemployment accounts of up to $3,000 to help jobless Americans buy job training and other services.

The bill, the Worker Reemployment Accounts Act, HR 444, allows demonstration and pilot project funding under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to be used by states and local workforce investment boards to offer the accounts.

With the accounts workers can use the funds to purchase:

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  • job training
  • child care
  • transportation services
  • relocation services
  • career counseling
  • computer classes
  • housing assistance
  • skills assessment services.

When an account recipient finds work within 13 weeks, he or she can keep the unused portion of the funds as a reemployment bonus under the terms of the measure, sponsored by Representative Jon Porter (R-Nevada).

“The Worker Reemployment Accounts Act is a new, innovative approach designed to provide unemployed Americans additional flexibility, greater choice, and more control over their employment search,” Porter said in a news release announcing the bill’s passage.   “This bill is about empowering Americans to find good paying jobs, and giving individuals the tools and resources they need to help them reenter the workforce.”  

More information about the bill is at  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR00444:  .

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