The alarm goes off at 5:30 am, and you could swear you went to sleep five minutes ago. First a quick shower, followed by the finishing touches on that homework assignment due tonight over coffee and breakfast — if there’s time. Then it’s off to work, a solid eight-plus hours of time where you’re busy with reports, meetings and other assorted ...

The workplace can be a political minefield. While you may all work as a team, you're all most concerned with your own job,right? How your bosses see you can determine a raise, a promotion — or even if you keep your job. Navigating office politics is not an easy task, but avoiding potentially negative situations should be your first priority. If ...

When you’re young and the world is seemingly your oyster, going to a job fair sounds like a no-brainer. A bunch of agencies looking to hire? And all in the same place? As long as you bring enough copies of your resume and pass them out to everyone, you’re certain to get a callback. Right? Not necessarily. Without the right approach, ...

Why isn't our government doing more to put people back to work? Mass unemployment is a human and national calamity. It destroys families, crushes hopes. The longer it lasts, the more it cripples economic recovery and undermines democracy. Nearly 27 million Americans are unemployed or can't find more than part-time work. Yet legislators are reacting to this reality somewhat like the ...

Group interviews are relatively easy if you work well in a team and are able to make your ideas heard in a crowd. However, they can be challenging if you have a quieter personality and prefer to keep to yourself. Regardless of how you feel about group interviews, there’s no reason you should treat them any different, in most respects, than ...

A gunman fatally shot one federal employee and wounded another at a Las Vegas federal courthouse before being killed by U.S. marshals on Monday morning. The victims were a court security officer and a deputy U.S. marshal, who was listed in stable condition. "I can receive no news more grim or sobering than word of a line-of-duty death or injury to ...

Since it first emerged in April, the global swine flu epidemic has sickened more than 1 million Americans and killed about 500. It's also spread around the world, infecting tens of thousands and killing nearly 2,000. This summer, the virus has been surprisingly tenacious in the U.S., refusing to fade away as flu viruses usually do. And health officials predict a ...

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery earlier this year, was kept at a hospital overnight after she became drowsy and fell from her seat aboard an airplane. Court officials blamed a reaction to medicine. Ginsburg was taken to Washington Hospital Center around 11:15 p.m. Wednesday by paramedics and released Thursday morning, court officials said. Ginsburg, ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The unemployment rate jumped to 9.7 percent in August, the highest since June 1983, as employers eliminated a net total of 216,000 jobs. The level of job cuts is less than July's upwardly revised total of 276,000 and is the lowest in a year. Analysts expected the unemployment rate to rise to 9.5 percent from July's 9.4 ...

Want to help the federal government save some money? Make sure to vote Thursday in a contest designed to help Uncle Sam cut costs. The winner gets a face-to-face meeting with President Obama before Christmas, and the winning idea will be included in his 2011 budget. The Office of Management and Budget launched the SAVE Award in September, an effort to ...

This report is the first in a three-part series. WASHINGTON (AP) - Nobody wants to buy them a beer. Even near military bases, female veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't often offered a drink on the house as a welcome home. More than 230,000 American women have fought in those recent wars and at least 120 have died doing ...

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will decide whether two people can do the work of five when it comes to resolving labor-management disputes in the workplace. The National Labor Relations Board, which for decades has had the responsibility of policing similar disputes, has operated with two members -- and three vacancies -- for more than a year. The reason ...

An independent engineers union at the Tennessee Valley Authority voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to affiliate with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. The Engineering Association, which represents scientists, engineers, technicians and other white-collar workers at TVA, voted 856 to 88 in favor of joining IFPTE. The association approached IFPTE after an internal deliberation about whether to join a larger ...

The U.S. Postal Service must look for new ways to generate revenue beyond simply reducing its workforce, said lawmakers and witnesses during a House hearing on Thursday. Employee layoffs are not the only solution to digging the agency out of debt, said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform's federal workforce subcommittee. "It would be a ...

Under ordinary circumstances, it would be socially awkward at best to inquire about how much money someone makes. It's simply not a topic for polite conversation. Unless, of course, you work in an environment in which salary data is a matter of public record--as it is in government. The leaders of Bell, Calif., learned that the hard way this month when ...

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, ...

Since the BP (NYSE:BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill on April 20, the American government has deployed 17,500 National Guard troops to respond to the environmental crisis. Over 484 miles of shoreline have been impacted, and 81,181 square miles of Gulf of Mexico waters have been closed to fishing. Many are wondering if, with stronger regulations, the incident could have been prevented. ...

Since he arrived at the Office of Personnel Management in April, Director John Berry has been an active advocate for federal charitable giving. The summer-long Feds Feed Families canned food drive collected more than 1 million pounds of goods for food banks nationwide, and Berry is confident that federal employees of all ages also will deliver for the 2009 Combined Federal ...

Stand on a busy corner in the District, and you'll notice that cellphones appear glued to the ears of dozens of passing drivers who openly flout the city's ban on hand-held phone use. That appearance is deceiving, according to a new study, which concludes that use of hand-helds would be 43 percent higher were it not for the District's ban and ...

Diane Sawyer will succeed her friend and former partner Charlie Gibson as the anchor of ABC's "World News" in January, making her the second woman to assume the prestigious chair at a network newscast. The move, announced Wednesday by ABC, will leave a sizable void at "Good Morning America," where Sawyer's star power will be hard to replace. Gibson, who left ...