Employer-Paid

For the past year, as the presidential election unfolded, President Barack Obama confronted a dizzying swell of economic news hiring up, hiring down, a euro crisis abroad, seesawing gasoline prices at the pump, foreclosures dragging down home values.

A survey of U.S. chief executives shows a sharp drop in the number of large companies that plan to add jobs or hire more workers.

Employers have posted more than 10,000 online job ads for technology professionals skilled in cloud computing in August alone for an 80 percent growth from August 2011, according to WANTED Analytics.

Manufacturing employment in Missouri experienced a slight increase in the past year with 364,988 workers and 8,137 manufacturers, according to the 2013 Missouri Manufacturers Register, an industrial directory published annually by Manufacturers' News Inc. in Evanston, Ill.

A federal appeals court in Chicago heard arguments Monday on the constitutionality of Wisconsin's law restricting collective bargaining by public employees one of several related appeals working their way through the courts.

Mexico's main political parties agree that the country's dysfunctional labor laws need to be retooled. What they don't agree on is how, with a new proposal to loosen hiring and increase union democracy threatening to unleash a wave of labor unrest.