Employer-Paid

House Republicans will stick to their insistence that a bill extending a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits include language speeding work on a controversial oil pipeline, Speaker John Boehner said Friday.

State workers hired after Jan. 1 no longer will be eligible to receive state health care coverage when they retire and long-term employees covered by the state's defined benefit pension will have to contribute 4 percent of their pay to keep that benefit under bills signed Thursday by Gov. Rick...

Employers with the strongest workplace environments tend to make the most investments in workplace and employee initiatives, according to a survey by global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller and global research training firm Great Place to Work.

Thirty-one percent of lawyers plan to hire legal staff in the first quarter of 2012, but another 4 percent expect to cut staff, according to the a quarterly legal hiring survey by Robert Half Legal, a legal staffing firm.

Throughout 2011, employer hiring plans remained mostly flat during the last three quarters of 2011, and signs point to a slow first quarter of 2012, according to a recent quarterly survey by BNA, a legal, regulatory and business information provider.

The West is recovering faster than the nation as a whole, but employment across the region remained far below pre-recession levels and the housing market showed few signs of improvement, according to an economic report released Thursday.