THURSDAY
Information Modeling — The St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers sponsors "ABCs of Building Information Modeling" to improve efficiency, savings and quality in the workplace.
— 7 a.m. Engineers Club, 4359 Lindell Boulevard, St. Louis
— $40 for members; $60 for nonmembers. Register online at www.slccc.net.
The cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento are examining whether one or more new Sacramento River crossings are needed to better connect the two communities, and want members of the public to weigh in on the matter.
A non-scientific survey was launched Monday as part of the Sacramento River Crossing Study: http://www.cityofsacramento.org/transportation/planning-policy/SacRiverCrossingsStudy.html. The online survey is available here.
The survey will accept one response per computer through June 24. Results will be released in mid-July.
“The nine-question survey will take just a few minutes to complete, but we believe it will yield a wealth of insight,” Sacramento city operations manager Fran Halbakken said in a news release. “For example, what kind of crossing is envisioned to address riverfront development on both sides of the river? Is the need best addressed by building one or more new facilities? Should a new structure be dedicated to public transit and bicycles/pedestrians or cars or all of the above modes? Where should it be located? That’s what we are exploring with the public low fee payday loans.”
The cities kicked off a joint feasibility study in April. It is intended to evaluate a number of alternatives from a “no build” option to multiple crossings and locations.
A final report is set to go to the city councils by the end of the year.
RxMedic, a maker of automated pill dispensing systems used in pharmacies, has been purchased by J M Smith, a South Carolina company that provides various products and services to the pharmacy industry.
J M Smith, based in Spartanburg, S.C., closed on its purchase of privately held RxMedic in late May, says RxMedic Senior Director Chris Cox. J M Smith had been one of the investors in the Raleigh company.
RxMedic, incorporated in 2007, sells its pill dispensing systems in North and South Carolina and parts of Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia. Cox said J M Smith’s purchase of the company gives it a better opportunity to grow because it can tap into J M Smith’s national sales and marketing force bad credit payday advance.Cox declined to disclose RxMedic’s revenue. The company’s competition includes Durham-based Parata Systems.
With the sale of the RxMedic, former CEO Alan Winchester has left the company. RxMedic currently employs 15. Cox says all of the remaining employees will be retained by the company and additional workers could be hired for its manufacturing operations in coming months. Cox said the number of workers the company hires depends on sales of the product.
A flood of temporary Census workers in May led to the biggest jump in jobs in ten years, the government reported Friday.
Employers added 431,000 jobs in the month, up from 290,000 jobs added in April. It was the biggest gain in jobs since March 2000.
But Census hiring was responsible for 411,000 of May’s increase in employment. Private sector employers also added 41,000 jobs in the period, well below the 218,000 private sector job gains in April. Government payrolls other than Census declined by 21,000 jobs in May, due largely to job cuts by state and local governments.
It was a disappointing number for private sector hiring, as economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast an overall gain of 500,000 in May. U.S. stocks traded sharply lower on the report, with the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 200 points in midday trading.
"This is a timely reminder that, although the economic outlook is improving, the recovery is still pretty fragile," said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics.
Despite the spike in hiring, the unemployment rate declined only modestly, to 9.7% from 9.9% in April. Economists had forecast it would decline to 9.8%.
After nearly two years of constant job losses, the U.S. economy has added 982,000 jobs so far in 2010, adding workers in every month, a sign that the labor market is improving beyond the short-term Census jobs. But the modest gain shows that employers are still cautious about adding staff.
Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the lower unemployment rate was encouraging, even if the slowing of private sector job growth was reason for concern.
But Republicans were quick to criticize the report as proof that the Obama administration had taken the wrong path on trying to create jobs.
"Let me be clear — during challenging times, a job is a job," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip. "Yet government jobs that are paid for by taxing small business people and borrowing from the Chinese are not signs of a healthy economic recovery."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, said she was encouraged by the numbers in the report, and that it was important to recognize how much the labor market has improved.
"The job picture is very different from what it was a year ago," said Maloney, one of the chairs of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. "We’re on an upwards trend. The road to recovery is bumpy, but we’re trending in the right direction."
Shrinking gains: Just over half of private sector industries added jobs in the month, while 46% continued to shave jobs from their payrolls. Job gains in the private sector were far more widespread during the previous three months.
Manufacturers added 29,000 jobs in the month, but that was balanced out by a 35,000 job loss in construction. Retailers also trimmed 6,600 jobs and financial firms cut 12,000 jobs. Some sectors that added jobs, such as leisure and hospitality or health care, posted their smallest gains in months.
The Census Bureau wasn’t the only employer adding temporary jobs, as there was a gain of 31,000 jobs in temporary help services.
Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings, a provider of specialized career Web sites, said he was surprised by the weak private sector hiring. A semi-annual survey by his firm had found employers in the process of stepping up hiring. Despite the disappointing numbers, he still expects job growth to pick up through the rest of this year.
"You don’t want to read too much into one months’ results," he said. "It could be a month of digestion and we move on from here. The indicators are still positive."
Bright spots: The good news in the report beyond Census was in hours worked, which increased to an average of 33.5 hours from 33.4. That helped to lift weekly wages and also cut the number of part-time workers who wanted full-time jobs by 343,000, as workers who had their hours cut during the recession were put back on full-time status.
Job seekers are also somewhat less discouraged, as the number of unemployed workers who wanted jobs but had stopped looking for work declined by 114,000.
But the problem of long-term unemployment continued to worsen as those out of work more than six months rose to a record 6.8 million, or nearly half of all unemployed workers.
"The U.S. unemployment rate is likely to be higher for longer during the current recovery due to a structural mismatch between workers and jobs," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced a program Thursday in which its workers can receive college credit from the online American Public University and receive a tuition discount from the school.
The company also said it will commit $50 million over three years to help workers pay for books and tuition above the reduced tuition rate. After the reduction, tuition will cost $212.50 per undergraduate credit hour and $255 for graduate credits.
Wal-Mart Chief Administrative Officer Tom Mars said the program grew out of a larger commitment to cultivate talent within the company. The plan is open to domestic workers at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores.
Alicia Ledlie, Wal-Mart senior director for associate development, said nearly three-quarters of Wal-Mart workers contacted in a survey said they preferred online study to attending a local college.
Ledlie said Wal-Mart looked at 81 colleges, including brick-and-mortar schools, and found American Public University, based in Charles Town, W.Va., to be the best fit.
Wal-Mart workers receive job training in areas ranging from ethics to retail inventory management, for which they can receive credit, she said.
Sara Martinez Tucker, a former U.S. undersecretary of education who is on Wal-Mart’s external advisory council, said Wal-Mart would have had to form a tremendous coalition of schools to offer a similar program through local community colleges and universities.
Tucker said it is helpful to employees because they don’t have to apply for reimbursement from their employer.
Students won’t have to pay for credits awarded based on their training.
American Public University, with 70,000 students, offers more than 100 certificate and degree programs.
The credit for training can be applied mainly to business- and retail-related courses. Wal-Mart said the school will have evaluated for credit jobs held by 70 percent of Wal-Mart workers by 2012. That covers about 1 million workers.
Wal-Mart also offers scholarships through its foundation and offers assistance to workers seeking GEDs.
Wal-Mart executives said the link with the school will help workers attain better jobs both inside and outside the company.
Tucker noted that if 10 percent of Wal-Mart’s U.S. workers get degrees, "that would be like adding three Ohio State’s worth of graduates."
American Public University is accredited in various ways, including national accreditation by the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council. It is run by for-profit American Public Education Inc.
New York’s The Lung Cancer Research Foundation will donate $25,000 for studies at the Translational Genomics Research Institute as a result of its first Strides for Life event in Arizona.
The 3-mile run-walk and children’s dash are modeled after the foundation’s longstanding event in New York. Because of its success, the foundation already has scheduled a second annual Arizona fundraiser at the same site, Tempe Arts Park, for April 10, 2011.
Laurie Carson, founder and president of the foundation, said she is thrilled with the 175 participants.
Her foundation provides funding nationally for lung cancer research. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, killing 1.3 million people each year. The problem, she said, is there is no practical way to screen for lung cancer.
As a result, nearly 75 percent of patients are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease, leaving few options for treatment payday advances.
The National Cancer Institute estimates that nearly 220,000 new cases of lung cancer will be diagnosed this year in the U.S., where more than 159,000 people will die from the disease.
Michael Bassoff, president of TGen Foundation, said the $25,000 immediately will be applied to support TGen’s lung cancer research.
“The gift from LCRF will support scientific research in an area that affects more cancer patients than any other type of cancer,” he said.
This $25,000 award follows a $75,000 award that LCRF gave TGen last year to conduct scientific investigations.
For more: www.lungfund.org and www.tgen.org.
The Illinois Senate Labor Committee has approved legislation authorizing a controversial plan to divert sales taxes to finance developer Bruce Holland’s construction of a $380 million, 400-acre entertainment, retail and restaurant project in Marion, Ill.
Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, and Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, sponsored the bill. The legislation now heads to the full Senate for consideration. The Illinois House of Representatives approved the legislation earlier this month by a vote of 79-35.
The development, which will include a mix of destination and entertainment businesses, retail stores and restaurants, has the potential to create 6,000 jobs during construction and 5,685 full-time jobs when completed, Holland said.
Holland, with Millennium Development and Holland Construction, scaled back the project, originally intended for Glen Carbon, Ill., and moved it south after Metro East lawyers blasted it and argued it would drain their tax bases.
Readers — good for them — want to make sure I have my facts right.
I’m not a tax consultant, but my understanding is that the IRS does not allow the strategy you wrote about to obtain tax-free capital gains (selling a mutual fund and buying it back the next day). You’re not allowed to buy back the same investment.
Several readers said the same thing and asked that I run a correction.
But there is nothing to correct. These readers are probably thinking about the so-called "wash-sale rule" that says you cannot claim a capital loss if you sell a security and buy the same or a "substantially identical" security within 30 days, either before or after the sale.
The rule does not apply if you sell at a gain, however. This gives investors who qualify an easy way to secure tax-free gains under a zero percent long-term capital gains rate still in effect through the end of 2010 for taxpayers in the 15 percent and under tax brackets.
My mail tells me many people still don’t know this: If your taxable income for the year, including any long-term capital gains, does not exceed the top of the 15 percent bracket ($68,000 for joint filers and $34,000 for singles in 2010), then your long-term gains are tax-free.
(For a gain to be considered long-term, you must have held the security more than a year.)
Therefore, if you are sitting on long-term paper gains on an investment you want to keep, and if realizing those gains won’t push you beyond the 15 percent tax bracket, it probably makes sense to sell and buy back.
Some caveats: Make sure you have no net capital losses that would be offset by the gains, negating any tax benefit. Consider any possible price change between the time you sell and buy back, and whether any commissions or trading restrictions apply payday loans.
On another topic, several readers wondered why I’m so insistent on wanting low fees for variable annuities that guarantee minimum lifetime withdrawals regardless of how the annuity investments perform.
Why would I care about the fees if I’m getting my guaranteed payments for as long as I live, even after principal is depleted? Aren’t the actual account balance and fees immaterial? What exactly am I missing here?
This reader — and others who made similar comments — are missing a basic understanding of how these annuities work and why anyone would consider them.
Variable annuities with guaranteed lifetime withdrawals are different from so-called immediate income annuities. With the latter, you typically hand out your principal to an insurance company and in return you get an income for life, period.
The variable annuities I wrote about do guarantee that, no matter how badly your investments perform, you’ll get a minimum income for life.
But this income is typically much less than what you would get for the same premium amount in a plain-vanilla immediate annuity.
Therefore, it makes no sense to invest in these variable annuities just for the guaranteed withdrawals — you can get more income with an immediate income annuity.
The reason to consider investing in the variable annuities is that, with the peace of mind offered by the guarantee, you can invest more aggressively and potentially achieve higher returns. You definitely want to do better than the minimum guarantee, and the more fees you pay, the more difficult — if not impossible — it becomes to do so.
Suburban Journals publisher Tom Wiley is leaving the company to be publisher of the New Haven Register and senior publisher of the Journal Register Co.’s Connecticut media group.
The Suburban Journals is a subsidiary of Lee Enterprises Inc., based in Davenport, Iowa. Lee also owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Wiley was named publisher of the Journals in February, replacing Bob Williams when he became publisher of The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, also a Lee subsidiary.
"This is a fantastic opportunity for Tom," said Kevin Mowbray, president and publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "His innovation, energy and creativity have helped us launch new products and improve existing ones."
The global spotlight is still on the Pittsburgh region, with domestic and international delegations and media visiting regularly to see firsthand Pittsburgh’s transformation and to learn about rebuilding an economy and revitalizing the environment.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance have packed their bags – and their instruments – and have crossed the Atlantic, ready to put Pittsburgh on the world stage during the BNY Mellon 2010 European Tour. It’s an ideal time for the PRA to be traveling with the PSO, capitalizing on the global exposure Pittsburgh received during last year’s G-20 Summit and leveraging the orchestra as one of our region’s most acclaimed assets.
It’s also the inaugural leg of a PRA-led Pittsburgh World Tour 2010, a marketing initiative that begins with the PSO in Europe and will extend into the fall in Seoul and Shanghai.
Representatives of the PSO and the PRA, along with regional business leaders, such as BPL Global’s CEO Keith Schaefer, will be creating a conversation about Pittsburgh as a prime business investment destination.
The PRA’s vice president of international business investment, Suzi Pegg, will be traveling with the PSO, leading the PRA’s business investment activities in Basel, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Paris and Prague. A native of Pittsburgh’s sister city in the U.K., Sheffield, Pegg has called Pittsburgh home since 2000.
Follow her entries from Europe this week on the Pittsburgh Business Times website. Pegg promises to offer perspective on Pittsburgh’s global positioning, post-G-20, as well as some lighter observations about life on the other side of the Atlantic.
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