CEPR

The downhill slide in U.S. union membership has stalled. 

After steep declines since 2008, the unionization rate leveled off last year, pointing to what is either a number that just can’t go any lower, a lull in yet more union membership hemorrhaging, or the beginning of a labor turnaround. 

Union membership plummeted by nearly 1.4 million workers between 2008 and 2010, but “hit a plateau in 2011,” according to the Center for Economic Policy Research, an economic think tank that reviewed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The private sector led the way with a union membership increase of 110,000 employees, while the public sector saw a 61,000 decline, mainly due to government cutbacks. 

The data shows a stabilization following years of unionization declines, but could it be the early signs of a union renaissance? 

“No, not yet,” surmised John Budd, a professor of work and organizations at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and director of the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies. 

“We’ve reached a core group that doesn’t have much left to shrink,” he said, about traditional unionized workers in industries such as auto, airlines, and healthcare. On the other hand, he added, it could be a sign “people are turning to unionization again.” 

The growing perception among many that economic inequities are rampant could fuel a rethinking of the role unions can play, he maintained. “That’s something that unions fight for, equality and economic fairness,” he said. “In terms of workers getting frustrated and unions turning the corner as a result, the signs of that potential have been around for a number of years now.” 

A positive sign, he noted, is that in a political environment that has vilified organized labor and has spawned movements to hamper organizing rights in states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin, membership numbers have stabilized. 

Others aren’t as hopeful. 

Gary Chaison, professor of Industrial Relations at Clark University’s Graduate School of Management, believes the worst is yet to come. “There will be greater layoffs in the public sector as cities and states have to lay off workers to narrow the budget shortfalls caused by excessive pension obligations,” he said. “And as the economy stalls, perhaps the result of continuing high employment and low consumer confidence, or the banking crisis in Europe, employers in manufacturing will be reluctant to add to their workforces.” 

Here are some details of the CEPR report: 

• The largest net increases in unionization came from health care and social assistance; construction; and durable goods manufacturing. 
• The biggest declines came from professional and business services; utilities; and non-durable manufactured goods. 
• Florida saw the biggest gains in union members in 2011; followed by Michigan Colorado, Illinois and Missouri. 
• New York, the most heavily unionized state, saw the sharpest drop, followed by California.

Overall, women represented the biggest increase in union membership with an increase of 36,000 female members, compared to about 12,000 men. 

“I don't think that men or woman have a greater natural propensity to join unions, but it's all about industry,” Chaison said. “Apparently there have been fewer job losses or health care occupations or service occupations -- hotels and restaurants -- dominated by women.”

Tony Dejak / AP

Is this dog thinking of crazy ways to make you late for work?

We here at Life Inc. are always learning new things about our readers.

This week, we learned that you all have given your bosses quite a few interesting and hilarious reasons for arriving late at work. Some of them are actually true!

A post on the oddest excuses HR people had heard for why their employees were late prompted a number of you to share your own stories of workplace tardiness.

One of our favorite posts came from a reader who is so concerned with being punctual that the reader's clock is always set 15 minutes fast. But on one particularly calamitous day, a combination of bad weather and bad traffic left the reader with just two minutes to spare:

“’Just made it,’ I thought as I closed the car door and tried to step away. I say tried to step away, because I'd caught my pant leg in the car door. Worse, I could see my keys on the dash. I could neither free my pant leg nor open the door.”

Luckily, the reader’s boss saw the whole thing, and everyone had a good laugh.

The original post recounted an HR person who said an employee was late because the cat had the hiccups.

Based on what our readers had to say on our blog and our Facebook page, pets are often conspiring to make you late.

Cats get stuck in trees, vomit on the floor and position themselves in just the right place to trigger the garage door sensor over and over.

Dogs jump in your car and lock the door with their paws, trash your trash bags and have late-night fights with other animals that leave both animal and human in need of medical care.

One reader even recounted how her bunny ate through the alarm clock cord, burning its mouth in the process and making her husband late for work.

Of course, you can get in all sorts of trouble in the morning without any pet intervention whatsoever.

Over on our msnbc Facebook page, one reader literally got stuck. In the bathroom.

“The door wouldn’t let me out of the bathroom and I had to break it in half, true story,” the reader posted.

Should we all have emergency axes under our sinks?

Another one of our favorites:

“Sorry I’m late, boss. The media was ignoring Ron Paul again.”

Your stories were completely engrossing and often laugh-out-loud funny. That’s something we could all use a little bit more of these days, when most stories about the job market are more serious.

Another reader on our Today Money Facebook page summed it up well:

“Thanks, you guys, you just helped me be late for work with these excuses!”

John Schoen, msnbc.com

Manufacturing accounts for 9 percent of the U.S. workforce, compared with 28 percent in 1960 and 12 percent just a decade ago.

President Barack Obama is on the road this week touting a plan to bring jobs back to the United States, in part by bolstering manufacturing here.

It’s no secret that’s a tough challenge.

The United States has lately seen an increase in manufacturing jobs, something Obama noted in his State of the Union address Tuesday. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 330,000 manufacturing jobs have been created over the past two years, bringing the total to nearly 11.8 million as of December.

Still, that is a nearly 2 million short of the 13.7 million manufacturing jobs that existed when the economy went into recession in December 2007. And it’s far fewer than in the late 1970s, when more than 19 million Americans -- out of a much smaller work force -- were employed in manufacturing, which was seen as a key path to a middle-class life.

Manufacturing may be bouncing back, but it is returning in a far different form. The recession washed out many inefficent companies, leaving behind operations that even leaner and more highly automated. That means they can make do with fewer workers even as they increase production.

As a recent series of stories in The New York Times has highlighted, successful companies like Apple have prospered largely by mastering a global supply chain that depends on sending work overseas to take advantage of low-cost labor.

Obama is hoping that tax breaks and other incentives will help encourage manufacturers to keep jobs here, or even bring some back. Time will tell whether that is true.

Related:

Why companies aren’t hiring more workers

Yes, we do still make things in America

Apple accused of ignoring labor abuses

AP

This product image provided by Taco Bell Corp., shows Taco Bell's new Johnsonville sausage and egg wrap, one of the items the fast-food chain will be offering on its new breakfast menu which debuts Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012.

It's getting a little crowded in the breakfast nook.

Fast food chain Taco Bell announced Thursday that it's entering the breakfast fray. It joins larger rivals such as McDonald's, Wendy's and Subway in a market saturated with breakfast options including specialty coffees to lure in addicts who’ll buy a breakfast sandwich along with that daily cup of joe.

Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell, which is known for its low price points and late night hours, is introducing a breakfast menu at nearly 800 restaurants across 10 Western states, including California and Arizona.

“This is a very important launch for our brand,” said Brian Niccol, Taco Bell’s chief marketing and innovation officer, in a statement. “While we're beginning in the West, where people grew up with breakfast burritos, we plan to reach a national audience in the future, becoming a part of their morning routine, and truly opening people's minds and taste buds as they begin to open their eyes and take on the day."

Notably, Taco Bell’s breakfast offerings include well-known brands like Tropicana, Cinnabon, and Seattle’s Best Coffee, which may serve to alleviate customer concerns about food quality following a 2011 lawsuit in which the contents of Taco Bell’s beef were called into question. 

“It helps with one of the issues that they need to content with, which is quality,” said David Morris, an analyst for consumer goods research firm Packaged Facts. “That’s a smart move.” 

The chain plans to open its drive-through locations an hour earlier than normal for breakfast, generally around 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., and will offer breakfast until 11 a.m. It aims to roll out its breakfast menu on the East Coast in 2013, and will begin experimenting with offering breakfast foods during late-night hours in late 2012.

Fast food breakfast has turned into one of the swiftest growing areas in the entire restaurant industry, and Taco Bell competitors like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Subway have already successfully rolled out breakfast menus. A 2010 report from NPD Group found that breakfast accounted for 60 percent of the restaurant industry’s growth over the last five years, with breakfast traffic increasing by an average of 2 percent per year. Lunch traffic, was largely flat, while dinner traffic decreased by an average of 2 percent per year during the same five-year period. 

Despite the already-crowded market for breakfast, Taco Bell’s low price points and its Mexican food-tinged variation on the traditional breakfast offering should serve it well in the battle over breakfast, experts say.

“Taco Bell has done a great job at being an industry leader in that category,” said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, a food and beverage industry research firm. “If you have a good coffee offering like many of the successful chains have, you can then provide a differentiated product because of the Mexican food offering.”

He added, “Younger Americans, specifically millenials, are looking for not only spiciness at breakfast, but also the cheaper price point.”

Taco Bell has some catching up to do, however. McDonald’s is already raking in a hefty 27 percent of its $33 billion in annual sales at breakfast, according to Tristano.

It could serve as a slightly cheaper alternative to some of its competitors. Among Taco Bell’s new breakfast offerings are sausage or bacon and egg burritos for $1.49, grand skillet burritos for $2.79, and $3.99 combo meals containing a breakfast item with a drink and hash browns. That’s slightly less than breakfast combo meals elsewhere, which tend to approach $5 and up.

Another plus for Taco Bell that stands to help it capture part of the breakfast market is its already-established drive-thru presence, as well as its decision to sell Seattle's Best Coffee, which Packaged Facts’ Morris says is one of the major reasons for the growth of sales in the breakfast category. “The magic of coffee is that it’s been one of the few products that people have been willing to pay more for both before the recession and after,” he said.

Taco Bell later opening hours versus competitors could be a problem, though. “A coffee drinker is going to go elsewhere if they [Taco Bell] don’t open early enough,” Morris said. “They’ll need to contend with that in order to compete with more established limited-service breakfast players.”

Bebeto Matthews / AP

Yep, I'm about to make you late for work

The most common excuse for being late to work is also the most predictable one: Traffic.

The least common excuses for being late to work? Now, those are much more interesting.

CareerBuilder.com recently asked Harris Interactive to survey employees and employers on workplace tardiness.

While employees said traffic, lack of sleep and bad weather were the chief causes of being late to work, hiring managers shared some more unusual excuses they’d heard for not showing up on time.

Among them:

*Employee's cat had the hiccups

*Employee’s angry roommate cut the cord to his phone charger, so it didn’t charge and his alarm didn’t go off.

*Employee’s leg was trapped between the subway car and the platform (turned out to be true).

*Employee thought she had won the lottery (she didn’t).

And our favorite:

*Employee got distracted watching the TODAY Show.

Now that’s totally understandable.

Apparently, getting to work on time is still a problem, even in this economy. The survey found that 16 percent of workers are late to work at least once a week, a tiny increase from last year.

It’s also not always a laughing matter: About one-third of hiring managers said they had fired an employee for being late.

Readers, tell us your most unusual reason for being late to work in the comments section below or on our Facebook page. We’ll feature some of the responses in an upcoming post.

Related:

Help wanted: Must be able to show up to work on time

The K2 Vandal youth board is also a cheap option for small adults.

By Kara Reinhardt, Cheapism.com

Recent snow in many regions of the country has resorts rejoicing and snowboarders raring to hit the slopes and terrain parks. There’s still time for beginners to take advantage of deals on lessons as part of Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month. Many offers include lift tickets and rental equipment. If you’re ready for your own gear, you can find an entry-level snowboard for less than $300 from a brand such as Forum, K2, Ride, Salomon, or even Burton. That’s not to mention the bargains available on snowboards from previous seasons.

Most budget boards are designed for entry-level to intermediate snowboarders, with features that make them more forgiving. They tend to have a softer flex, which means they bend and twist more easily than stiffer boards built for high speeds. That gives even younger, smaller snowboarders more control and helps park riders initiate jumps. Manufacturers often give their boards a flex rating on a 1-to-5 or 1-to-10 scale, with 1 being the softest.

Low-cost boards are typically the same shape at both ends, which makes it easy for snowboarders to ride regular (with the left foot in front) or switch (with the right foot in front). These so-called “twin-tip” boards come in two different varieties. Riders who already know their preferred stance can opt for a directional twin, which is stiffer at the tail or back end of the board, allowing for more controlled turns. A true twin has uniform flex throughout.

Traditionally snowboards have had a bit of an arch in the center, known as camber, that’s forced flat against the ground by the rider’s body weight, resulting in springy, responsive performance. These days, inexpensive boards commonly feature reverse camber, or rocker, where the center of the board curves toward the ground and the ends lift off the snow. This helps keep beginners from catching an edge, making rocker an appealing choice for any rider who prefers smooth landings to face plants. One drawback is the board doesn’t grip the snow as well when you’re speeding downhill trying to make aggressive turns. A snowboard with flat or zero camber has a flat base that sits flush against the snow and combines attributes of both traditional and reverse camber.

Finally, inexpensive snowboards feature extruded bases, which are generally slower but easier to maintain and repair than the sintered bases on pricier boards.

Below are Cheapism’s top picks for affordable snowboards.

• The Salomon Pulse (starting at $249) is a directional twin board that earns kudos for its versatility. The flat camber provides more stability than rocker but still helps new riders avoid catching an edge. (Where to buy)
• The K2 Vandal youth board (starting at $200) comes in sizes big enough to suit some small adults as well. Experts recommend this true twin board with rocker for riders itching to learn some tricks in the terrain park. (Where to buy)
• The Forum Recon (starting at $300) transitions easily from the park to powder to groomed runs, according to experts. This is a directional twin board with rocker and a soft to medium flex. (Where to buy)
• The Ride Lowride (starting at $170) is a smaller junior board that experts favor for learning. It has the softest flex in the line and a true twin shape with rocker. Ride also offers the nearly identical Blush, with more feminine graphics, for girls. (Where to buy)

More from Cheapism:
Cheap snowboards
Cheap women's snowboards
Best hiking backpacks
Kids winter activities

Anthony D'Ambrosio

A messy desks may lead to clearer, more organized thinking, a new study shows

Attention bosses who harass employees to clean up their cluttered cubicles: As it turns out, messy desks may lead to clearer, more organized thinking, a new study shows.

And this effect may not just be limited to the worker with the messy desk. The study results suggest that the mess-effect may impact all those sitting near the clutter, says Jia Liu, a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Conventional wisdom is that a messy desk leads to a messy mind, Liu says. But sometimes the mess sparks a desire for simplicity, making people to think in a more organized fashion, she adds.

Liu and her colleagues ran a series of experiments to determine how people react to clutter, according to the report published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

In one experiment, 49 college students were asked to sit at a cluttered cubicle, a tidy cubicle, or one that was in-between. 

After sitting at the desk, the volunteers were asked to rate on a scale of one to nine how well a series of statements fit them: “It upsets me to go into complicated situations,” “I would like to simplify my life as much as I can,” “I would like to keep things simple,” and “I am bothered by complicated things.”

Next the volunteers were given a test in which they needed to sort 33 products into groups – the volunteers had to come up with an organizing principle themselves.

When the results were in, it was clear that people sitting at messy desks came up with much simpler organizing principles. They were also the ones who scored high on questions like, “I would like to simplify my life as much as I can.” 

Liu and her colleagues concluded: “Opposite to conventional wisdom, we found that participants working at a messy desk displayed simpler cognitions. This is because messiness induces a need for simplicity.”

The study suggests that someone else’s mess might do just as well to spark a need for simplicity. “Other people’s messy desks may indeed help us to organize things simply, as in our experiment the mess was not generated by the participants,” Liu says. “They were placed in a messy environment.”

Does that mean bosses should maybe encourage employees to be messy?

Not so fast, Liu says.

“We’d be careful with making recommendations,” she explained. “One reason is that simplification is not always desirable. In addition, we suspect that extreme mess certainly impairs efficiency.” 

Getty Images stock

Are you hiding a money secret?

Maybe you snuck a latte in this morning even though you and your spouse swore off the coffee shop to save money.

Maybe you told your boyfriend those shoes you bought were on sale, when really you paid full price.

Or maybe you’re waiting for just the right moment to reveal to your fiancé that you have a $12,000 credit card bill hanging over your head.

Everyone knows financial issues can make or break a relationship, and yet we’re guessing few of us are completely honest with our spouse or partner when it comes to money.

TODAY.com and SELF magazine are partnering to find out the truth about money lies.

We want to hear from you: How much financial information do you have to share with your partner, and when? What is an acceptable little white lie, and when does not being upfront about finances constitute financial infidelity?

Click here to take our survey, and we’ll use the results in some upcoming stories.

Getty Images / Getty Images file

A man eats his lunch at a Burger King in London.

The next time you stop in for a morning latte or head out for a restaurant lunch, take a look around – and don’t be surprised if you see a lot of young men standing in line.

A new survey of workers finds that men spend significantly more on coffee and lunch than women.

The survey, from staffing firm Accounting Principals, also found that younger workers spend more than older workers on lunch and coffee during the workday.

Overall, those lunches out and coffee breaks are costing workers a bundle.  American workers who buy coffee and lunch spend an average of $1,000 a year on coffee and $2,000 a year on lunch, based on the survey of 1,000 workers.

About two-thirds of workers buy lunch and half buy coffee during the week.

Men were slightly more likely than women to go out to eat, but they spent a lot more. The men who buy their lunches spend an average of $46.30 on lunch each week, compared with $26.50 for women who go out to eat.

Men who buy coffee spend an average of $25.70 vs. $15 for women.

The caffeine fix is a bigger hit on the wallets of 18- to 34-year-old workers. Younger workers who buy coffee spend an average of $24.74 a week on coffee, compared with $14.15 for workers 45 and older who buy coffee during the work week. Younger workers also spend far more on lunch than older workers: about $45 a week vs. $32.

Not surprisingly, a third of those surveyed said one of their goals for 2012 was to bring their own lunch more often.

Accounting Principals, a unit of Adecco, commissioned the survey in December.

Tip of the hat to Consumerist, which first reported on the study.

Related:

Frugal food: Brown bag options that won't break the bank

Starbucks raising prices in Northeast, Sunbelt

Yes, the job market is slowly improving. But employment, or lack thereof, continues to be among the hottest topics for politicians, economists, businesses -- and Life Inc. readers.

Our most popular post this week was actually posted late last week. But the topic -- that many employers say they can’t find good workers despite the high unemployment rate -- kept readers talking for days.

More than 30,000 people took our poll on whether it’s hard to find good workers, even in this economy, and the results may surprise some people.

Nearly four in 10 readers said they or their employers were having trouble finding good candidates, while about two in 10 said there were plenty of qualified people out there. The rest either worked at places that weren’t hiring or were unemployed.

Many readers complained that employers these days seem to have unrealistic expectations about people’s qualifications.

“Firms continue to create positions out of touch with reality, say, an accountant who can juggle and has hair-styling experience,” one reader lamented.

Others complained that employers assume they can offer less money or other perks because people are so desperate for work.

“The problem is they are unwilling to spend the money on training or pay a decent wage,” another reader wrote.

It’s no secret that those of us who are lucky enough to have a job are likely working harder than ever, as employers seek to squeeze more productivity out of everyone they hand a paycheck to.

For many, that means working through lunch. Many readers could relate to a post this week on the fact that the good old lunch hour is becoming an endangered species.

“Endangered? I know NO ONE who takes lunch hours!” one reader who tweeted the post howled.

About 65 percent of readers who took our poll on the topic said everyone at their office eats at their desk.

Some who said they do take a lunch break at least had the good sense to realize everyone else is probably jealous.

“I work for a European company -- long lunch hour, 36 days of vacation, good health care, supportive management -- sorry USA,” one reader wrote.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

The median amount of time it's taking for unemployed people to find new jobs is about 21 weeks.

Here’s the good news: Employers are hiring more workers than they are firing these days, a welcome turnaround from the darkest days of the Great Recession.

Here’s the bad news: If you are among those unlucky enough to lose your job now, you'd better prepare for a long job search.

The median duration of unemployment was 21 weeks or about five months as of December. That means half of all unemployed workers had been without a job for more than five months.

That’s actually an improvement from mid-2010, when the median duration of unemployment peaked at 25 weeks. But it’s still nearly three times what it was before the recession began and much higher than in previous tough job markets.

The main problem: There just aren’t enough jobs to go around.

Last year the economy added an average of about 137,000 jobs a month. While that’s better than when the economy was shedding jobs, it wasn’t nearly enough to absorb the millions of unemployed and new workers entering the market, said Sylvia Allegretto, an economist with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.

“That rate of job growth is simply not fast enough to really soak up all those who are unemployed and underemployed, and those who have left the labor market and will be coming back to the labor market,” Allegretto said.

Allegretto doesn’t expect the situation to improve much soon for the long-term unemployed.

That’s partly because there are still 13 million people who are unemployed and seeking work. It’s also because there are many other Americans out there who may have stopped looking for a job because the market was so bad, and will start looking again if the market improves.

Those excruciatingly long job searches are an especially big problem for older workers. The median duration of unemployment for 20- to 24-year-olds was 16.3 weeks in December, compared with 31.4 weeks for 55- to 64-year-olds.

Related:

Many Americans still not prepared for a job loss     
Five years without work: Labor department will now track it

Mark Lennihan / AP

People wait to talk with potential employers at a job fair in New York last December.

The sudden loss of a job has become, if not commonplace over the last years, at least not very surprising.

And yet, many Americans remain unprepared for not having an income. A new survey from Country Financial finds that one-third of Americans would immediately fall behind on their bills if they lost a job and were left with no income.

That’s virtually the same result that Country Financial got the last time they asked the same question, in July of 2009.

The good news: About one-quarter of Americans are well-prepared for a job loss. The January survey found that 24 percent of respondents could weather five months without an income. That’s also virtually the same percentage as in July of 2009.

Country Financial conducts the survey of 3,000 people bi-monthly.

Although the economy is consistently adding more jobs than it is shedding, some workers continue to be let go. For example, Kraft Foods said this week that it would cut 1,600 jobs as it prepares to split its business in two.

If you do lose a job, the market remains tough. The median time it takes to find a new job is 21 weeks, or about five months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There are currently about 13 million unemployed Americans who are looking for work, and the unemployment rate is at 8.5 percent.

Related:

Role reversal: Employers say they can't find workers

Few part-timers but more working multiple jobs