Hiring is BACK!

Hiring is back in a big way on many college campuses, one of several signs a recovery in the U.S. jobs market is gaining traction. After four years during which many students graduated to find no job and had only their loans to show for their studies, most college campuses are teeming with companies eager to hire.

A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found 2012 hiring is expected to climb 10.2 percent, above a previous estimate of 9.5 percent.

Companies such as General Electric, Amazon, Apple and Barclays Global are looking for new staff, even if some firms remain below the pre-recession levels of new hiring. In another sign of the recovery, some first-time job seekers are receiving multiple offers.

At University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the career service office has seen up to now a 7.4 percent increase in the number of interviews of students by potential employers from last year and the number of companies seeking to recruit for full-time jobs is up 9.2 percent.

Undergraduate business majors reporting full-time job offers is up about 10 percent.

Career experts at a dozen of U.S. schools said they have seen an increase of 15 to 30 percent in the number of companies attending campus career fairs. At University of Florida, the fall career fair garnered 15 percent more companies in attendance than in 2010.

And 150 companies asked to conduct interviews versus about 100 in recent years, said Ja'Net Glover, associate director of employer relations at the school.

The increase in demand was so significant that it was the first time in years the school had to use both the first and second floors of the school's basketball facility for interviews.

GE’s New U.S. Jobs

General Electric Co. (GE) Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt says he’s returning refrigerator-production work to the U.S. from Mexico to boost profitability in appliances. Investors say a bigger reason may be his leadership of President Barack Obama’s jobs panel.

Immelt was in Louisville, Kentucky, yesterday to say that he’s bringing back 600 jobs under an $800 million investment in its manufacturing complex there. Welcomed by local officials, the new positions add to GE’s existing Louisville workforce of about 4,000.

Republicans only want certain types of voters at the front of the ballot box in the USA....

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to enter the turbulent political waters of voting rights on Tuesday, signaling that the Justice Department will take an aggressive stance in reviewing new laws in several states that civil rights advocates say are meant to dampen minority participation in the national elections next year.


The speech could inflame a smoldering partisan dispute over race and ballot access just as the 2012 campaign cycle intensifies.

Mr. Holder is to speak Tuesday evening here at the presidential library of Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The act enables the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to object to election laws and practices on the grounds that they would disproportionately deter minority groups from voting, and to go to court to block states from implementing them.

A draft of Mr. Holder’s speech urges Americans to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, achieve success by appealing to more voters.”

Mr. Holder is also expected to make the case for overhauling elections systems, including automatically registering all eligible voters; barring state legislators from gerrymandering their own districts; and creating a federal statute against disseminating fraudulent information to deceive people into not voting.

This year, more than a dozen states set forth new voting restrictions. For example, eight — Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — imposed new laws requiring voters to present state-issued photo identification cards. Previously voters were able to use other forms of identification, like bank statements, utility bills and Social Security cards.

Proponents of such restrictions — mostly Republicans — say they are necessary to prevent voter fraud that could cancel out the choices of legitimate participants in an election. Opponents — mostly Democrats — say there is no evidence of meaningful levels of fraud and contend that the measures are a veiled effort to suppress participation by eligible voters who lean Democratic.

The Justice Department is reviewing the new laws in South Carolina and Texas requiring voters to present photo identification cards. It has sought information from the states about the racial breakdown of the group of eligible voters who do not currently have such identification to see whether the rule would disproportionately deter minorities from voting.

The Justice Department is also engaged in litigation with Florida over a new state law restricting the availability of early voting — including barring it on the Sunday before Election Day, when black churches had traditionally followed services with get-out-the-vote efforts. It also imposed new rules on groups that conduct voter registration drives, including fining them each time a volunteer does not turn in a voter registration form within 48 hours. That section has prompted the League of Women Voters to stop registering new voters in Florida.

The three states are among 16 jurisdictions that must, under Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, receive clearance for any changes to their election laws because of their history of suppressing minority voting. They bear the burden of proving that their changes will not disproportionately prevent minority groups from voting — even if there was no discriminatory intent.

John Payton, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said he was traveling to Austin to attend Mr. Holder’s speech, adding it was “really important that he bring the powers that he has to bear on this challenge to our democracy.”

“Since the Voting Rights Act was signed,” Mr. Payton said, “we have not seen this much action that will have the effect of limiting people’s ability to vote.