CareerLife highlights its top career and employment news for the day below.
American workers spend $3,000 per year on lunch and coffee
According to a new survey by Accounting Principals, a finance and accounting staffing firm, American workers are spending a huge sum of their earnings on somewhat regular daily purchases. The survey found that half of American workers spend around $1,000 per annum on coffee, at an average spend of more than $20 per week. It also found that two thirds spend nearly $2,000 on lunch, at an average spend of $37 per week.
The survey also showed that a lot of workers were unaware about what their biggest expenses were. About 42% of workers identified commuting costs as the expense they will like most for their employer to reimburse, while lunch expenses were chosen by 11% of employees. However, the commuting costs the average employee around $1,500 a year, less than the $2,000 for lunch.
It seems that most consumers are unaware of how quickly the small but consistent expenses add up over time and an average American that has a career lifespan of 40 years can be faced with a $120,000 coffee and lunch bill, which does not factor in inflation.
Other survey findings included:
- Younger professionals (ages 18-34) spend almost twice as much on coffee ($24.74) during the week than those ages 45+ ($14.15). They spend more on lunch, with an average of $44.78 per week as compared to their older co-workers who spend $31.80 per week.
- One-quarter of employees wish their company would invest in better vending machine snacks and 22% would like their company to invest in better coffee in the office.
GetHired.com gets funded
GetHired.com, a video-based social recruiting platform and job board, today announced that it has raised $1.75 million in a round of seed funding. GetHired.com is a free service that allows candidates to embed video and audio files into their resumes.
Job seekers registered on the site can record and submit personal responses to pre-screening questions posted by an employer at the start of the hiring process. This enables the employers are to quickly find the most qualified candidates for their organization, significantly saving time and money.
Teens shun careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
U.S. teenagers are worried that pursuing a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) will be fraught with complications despite as much 67 percent of sixth to twelfth graders seeing it as the best chance of getting a job in the future according to an online December, 2011 survey conducted by
Harris Interactive for
ASQ.
About a third (34 percent) agreed that a career as a medical doctor, and a quarter (26 percent) for engineering, provide the most job prospects upon graduation. Other careers students chose as offering the great job opportunities include:
- Teacher — 19 percent
- Lawyer — 17 percent
- Entrepreneur — 16 percent
- Sales and marketing — 11 percent
- Accountant — 11 percent
Despite the high in interest in these careers, many students were equally concerned with impediments they believed will stop them from following a STEM career path.
- Twenty-six percent of them thought that the cost and length to time to get a STEM degree was too high when compared to other careers.
- Twenty-five percent did not think their grades in STEM subjects of math and science were good enough.
- Twenty-five percent thought that STEM degree careers involve too much work and studying compared to other careers.
Houston tops list for the cities with the highest number of manufacturing jobs
Manufacturers' News, Inc., recently released a list of the top U.S. cities ranked by number of manufacturing jobs as of January 1st, 2012 which can be seen here. The city of Houston took the top spot for industrial employment with 235,038 manufacturing jobs, up 2.9% over last year. New York came in second with 140,952 jobs, up 1.3%. Chicago with 107,264 jobs (down 1.3%), St. Louis with 80,795 jobs (down 2.8%) and Los Angeles with 79,873 jobs (down 4.5%) account for the rest of the top five ranking cities.
Of the top fifty cities are five were located in California (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Irvine and Santa Clara), and another five located in Texas (Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin). Only seventeen of the top fifty cities reported an increase in the number of manufacturing jobs from a year ago with Salt Lake City, up 4.3%; Seattle, up 3.3%; Charlotte, up 3.1%; Portland, up 2.6%; and Tulsa, up 2.1%, amongst the top performers.
