Time for our bi-weekly look at the economy and jobs market. Here's what's been going on in February.
Fortune released its list of the Top 100 Companies to Work For. Topping the list are SAS, Edward Jones, Wegmans Food Markets, Google, and NuggetMarket.
In addition, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) unveiled the Hire Now Tax Cut Act of 2010 in hopes of spurring job creation. The legislation would allow any private-sector employer that hires a worker who had been unemployed for at least 60 days to not have to pay the employer's share (6.2 percent) of the Social Security payroll tax on that employee for the remainder of 2010.
Other headlines:
Reuters: Jobless, price data fan concerns on economy. The Labor Department reported a surge in the number of workers filing new applications for unemployment insurance last week. This is continued evidence that the labor market is recovering more slowly than the economy as a whole. In total, the economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since December 2007.
Computerworld: IT hiring jumps in January. The TechServe Alliance reported that U.S. IT employment added 12,900 jobs in January, a 0.3 percent increase over December and one of the best increases since late 2008. The TechServe Alliance calls the monthly gain encouraging, after a debilitating year for the tech job market. (According to analysis by the IEEE-USA, the number of working computer professionals dropped by 198,000 in 2009. The number of employed software engineers also fell nearly 2 percent last year.)