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GENEVA -- Swiss banking giant UBS AG is to cut as many as 10,000 employees, or some 15 percent of its staff, to drastically shrink its ailing investment bank.

The news of the layoffs came as Switzerland's biggest bank posted another big loss for the third quarter. It said Tuesday that the job cuts are part of a strategy to shore up profits.

Continue reading UBS To Cut 10,000 Jobs After Big 3Q Loss

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Maybe the customer isn't always right.

When Robert Thibodaux Sr., a commissioner with the Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District, went to buy his weekly lottery tickets at the end of October, he aimed to purchase his usual ticket package. He spent $5 to buy two Lotto tickets, two Powerball tickets and one Easy 5 ticket, according to an Associated Press report. Instead, the powerplay option was accidentally added to the tickets, bumping up his initial purchase by $2.

Continue reading Clerk's Mistake Makes Louisiana Man a Millionaire

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By Dan Fastenberg

One of the secrets of finance is that the banking world has a history of working in a lot of ways like a basketball league. You may be a star, but your killer jump shot barely matters if your team is in last place. Or to put in actual terms, what bank you work at is as important as your analyst skills. So if you're lucky enough to be one of the premiere bankers, you can just change teams, or banks, when fortunes fade.

That fluidity in the finance world may however be coming to an end, or so says a new report from Reuters. "There are plenty of resumes going around in the market right now, just not too many takers," Joe Neitham, a recruiter at TRC Group in Singapore, told the news agency. Just four years ago, when the volatility arrived on Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, its course was unpredictable. And its contours have already changed, Reuters says. When Lehman and other giants came crashing down, there were as many finance houses, like Barclays, that were then seeing golden days, going on "hiring sprees" in the first few years of the financial crisis.

The dynamic of 2011 is quite different, the report says. If banks aren't trimming their rolls, they certainly aren't hiring anymore either, Reuters says. In other words, no bank can speak of flush times. One could look to Asia to get a sense of the new stop sign that has taken over on Wall Street. Indeed, Asian finance was a bastion of prosperity during the worst of America's finance woes, and the securities sector there grew from 42,000 employees in 2007 to 55,000 at the end of this September. Among the Asian banks that were once outlets for hiring that are now going forward with a no new hands on deck policy is the Japanese financial holding company, Nomura.

Observers of Wall Street have tried to come up with explanations as to how some banks were up until this point able to see sky high returns even as global finance confronted its worst crisis since the Great Depression. And many have highlighted the popular Wall Street policy of maintaining skeleton crews, keeping staff overhead as low as possible to boost profits. It may be that all banks are now catching on, creating the new dynamic described above. Regardless, finance chieftains have defended the no hiring policies by highlighting the so-called "uncertainty" they are operating under, thereby disincentivizing hiring. And among the issues raised by Wall Street executives in defending the lack of hiring are the new regulations introduced by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

Among the regulations introduced by Dodd-Frank is the mandate that banks keep more money in reserve so they need not look to Washington for a bailout in the event of massive crisis. This policy was also intended to halt the riskiest of trading. The new framework has drawn the ire of bankers, who say our capitalism must allow for such trading. For his part, former Sen. Chris Dodd, who sponsored the bill, is wearing the oft-sounded rebuke of his bill as a badge of courage.

"I should be flattered, I suppose," he told NBC's Meet the Press online program "Press Pass" on Friday. "I don't know of anyone who wants to go back to the fall of 2008."

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Recruiters spend countless hours reviewing resumes and screening candidates. In fact, they spend so much time scanning resumes, they can often do it in one minute or less.

As disappointing as that may be given all the hard work you put into your resume, it's the unfortunate reality...and with such a small amount of time to make an impression, it's no wonder they occasionally get it wrong. You may have been the perfect person for the position, but because you failed to successfully package yourself, your resume and your chances end up meeting their demise with the click of a mouse. Read on to learn the top four reasons your resume may end up in recycle bin or folder.

Continue reading 4 Reasons Resumes Are Rejected

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President Barack Obama hasn't given up on it. Having seen Congressional Republicans dash his hopes of passing his American Jobs bill as a whole, Obama is now seeking to get his plan through in what he calls "bite-sized pieces."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he will try and introduce a weekly vote on each component of the bill, starting with the plan to spend $35 billion to save the jobs of public school teachers, police and firefighters. (The Senate squashed that one too, during a procedural vote on Oct. 21.) And this week, parts of the $447 billion plan dedicated for infrastructure including $60 billion for transportation projects will be voted upon as well. The total money the Obama administration had originally set aside for infrastructure-related projects was $105 billion. The White House has declined to specify the exact number of jobs it expects to be created through spending on highway, schools and other infrastructure projects.

The legislation has reignited a decades-old debate about jobs creation through infrastructure plans. And the issue inevitably casts the spotlight on the New Deal legislation initiated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his first term -- when the national unemployment rate stood at 24.9 percent.

The jobs that Obama envisions creating through his plan include those of construction workers and engineers to help in "modernizing our roads, rail, airports and waterways," according to a White House fact sheet. And it was exactly those kinds of skilled workers who labored on a sizable portion of New Deal projects, such as ones run through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the largest New Deal agency.

Run by top Roosevelt adviser Harry Hopkins, the WPA oversaw the spending of roughly $13 billion on the construction of highways like the Merritt Parkway in the Northeast, and buildings like the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. In total, some 8 million jobs were created by the WPA during its eight years of existence from 1935 to 1943, according to the WPA's archives. That figure represented slightly less than half the total amount of people who were on federal relief at the inception of the WPA.

"It's almost a surefire thing," says H.W. Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas, Austin, in an interview with AOL Jobs. "Adding workers on government projects [during the New Deal] surely helped bring down the unemployment rate.

"These are not jobs that will persist indefinitely," says Brands, who is currently at work on a book about Roosevelt. "This is contract work we are talking about. Permanent jobs is not the idea."

As soon as Roosevelt took office in 1933 he began immediately pushing through his programs during the first 100 days of his administration. National unemployment went from 24.9 percent that year to 20.1 percent the year the WPA was founded in 1935, then to 14.6 percent in 1940, the year before the country entered World War II.

And while many have long chalked up the improvement in the national unemployment rate at the end of the 1930s to the ramp up in spending before World War II, there are also those who contest whether federal infrastructure projects provided any help at all.

"If FDR had done virtually nothing, it appears that the economy would have continued to expand on its own," says Jim Powell, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and author of "FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression," via email to AOL Jobs.

Powell represents a class of analysts who credit the role of the private sector for the recovery from the Great Depression.

"The economy was recovering before the New Deal Program was entirely drafted," he also says. "Two of the most important New Deal programs (the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, both signed in June 1933) were anti-expansion. They restricted production, and in the case of the AAA actually destroyed large quantities of food in an effort to boost farm prices, which surely didn't help American consumers."

Powell notes that the GDP had already begun improving shortly before Roosevelt took office. And during FDR's first year in office, it climbed 17 percent, well before any New Deal policies could begin to take full effect. New Deal skeptics like Powell instead credit the recovery of the GDP and employment to the natural consequences of market flow. The numbers turn around once wages and prices hit bottom, and the economy is characterized by bargains. That in turn leads to a natural recovery of spending and increased employment, the argument goes.

"There had been many panics and crashes before in American history; there weren't any New Deals before, and the economy recovered every time," says Powell.

For Obama, the option to champion a laissez faire response in the face of the country's economic issues would introduce at least a pair of problems. For starters, it would fail to present the commander-in-chief as engaged with the country's employment problems heading into an election year. But such an approach would also be at odds with both his own governing philosophy and that of the people who got him elected.

Indeed, many of Obama's supporters have consistently embraced an activist response to jump start the private sector. They point to the 2009 stimulus as a model, and embrace its successes as a reason to do more of the same.

"There's no question this approach [the American Jobs Bill] is basically the same as the ARRA [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009]," says Donna Cooper, a senior fellow with the Economic Policy team at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, who served as secretary of policy and planning for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania under Governor Ed Rendell. "But even where you have government spending for infrastructure, the Feds will only be raising money. It leads to direct private employment in construction, but also in industries like asphalt and steel."

And as a counter to commentators who champion tax cuts as a means to grow the economy, Cooper points to the stat, provided by economist Mark Zandi, of a net gain of $1.44 for every dollar spent on government spending. As a point of comparison, every dollar set aside for a tax rebate adds $1.22 to the economy.

Cooper's home state of Pennsylvania provides a case study in effective jobs growth from federal stimulus help. Among its most noteworthy projects from the stimulus was a major overhaul of the battered Vare Avenue Bridge. The six-lane, mile-and-a-half span on I-76 had long been an eyesore in the Keystone State. After receiving $60 million in stimulus money, the bridge was redone in 12 months, from contract to last steel beam. It, along with other in-state bridge upgrades, supported nearly 4,000 jobs in Pennsylvania as of July, according to the state's transportation department. And the employment takes place on a two-tier track, both through the direct construction and engineering jobs, as well as a result of private aggregate spending on related products, such as asphalt and steel.

"The problem with the Jobs bill," Cooper says, "is that it may not be enough."

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More than a fifth of adults -- 21 percent -- said they plan to get a second job to help with holiday spending this year, according to an online survey by Harris Interactive. Twelve percent of respondents said they already had secondary employment.

Additional findings of the survey of nearly 2,500 adults showed that 45 percent of them will have difficulty affording gifts this year. Two-thirds of respondents said they will have more difficulty affording any expense related to the holidays this year, compared to last year.

Despite the need for additional employment and the welcome income it provides, many job seekers may find it difficult to land a seasonal job since many retailers are maintaining hiring at last year's levels. Some of the largest retailers, such as Toys R Us and Best Buy, are scaling back their hiring plans for the holiday season.

In announcing its annual forecast for holiday hiring, employment-services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas last month said that most retailers have little incentive to add more workers than they did a year ago.

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Still, job growth remains too weak to lower the unemployment rate, which stayed at 9.1 percent for the third straight month.

The Labor Department also revised the previous two months to show that companies hired at a better pace than first estimated.

Nearly half of the gains last month occurred because 45,000 striking Verizon workers returned to their jobs.

Employers have added an average of only 72,000 jobs in the past five months. The economy must create twice as many just to keep up with population growth.

The jobs crisis has intensified a debate in Washington 13 months before President Barack Obama will run for re-election.

Still, job growth remains too weak to lower the unemployment rate, which stayed at 9.1 percent for the third straight month.

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Prizes will be decided by popular vote and AOL Jobs Editors, so be sure your story is honest and true to you.

Story submissions must be in by Oct. 2, 2011

Voting will take place Oct. 3 - 7.

Winner will be announced on Monday, Oct. 10

Good Luck!

Enter to Winwww.aoljobsweek.com/

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In honor of the upcoming 2011 Emmys, online salary database PayScale.com gathered a group of six TV starlets and researched their career choices and earnings. The following is salary info for some of America's most well-loved characters.

1. Molly Flynn, "Mike & Molly"

Job: Elementary School Teacher

How much she'd make in real life: $49,700

She's sweet, she's thoughtful and she's in love with her whole-lot-to-hug honey, Mike. Played by Melissa McCarthy, the character of Molly charms audiences and manages her classroom of fourth graders in Chicago with grace. "I don't get a lot of atta boys as a teacher, but I know if I reach just one kid I am making a difference." And for her hard work, she earns about $49,700 per year.

-- Find teacher jobs

2. Dr. Mark Sloan, a.k.a. Dr. McSteamy, "Grey's Anatomy"

Job: Plastic Surgeon

How much he'd make in real life: $309,600 - $382,100

This rogue is all chaos, drama and sex appeal. Whether breaking hearts or sewing straight stitches, he thickens the plot of Grey's Anatomy week after week. Played by Eric Dane, Dr. McSteamy tops our character income list. As an otolaryngologist in Seattle, Wash., who specializes in plastic surgery, PayScale estimates his annual salary to range between $309,600 and $382,100. No wonder he can always open up his pocketbook to pay for his romantic misdeeds.

-- Find surgeon jobs

3. Leslie Knope, "Parks and Recreation"

Job: Parks and Recreation Director

How much she'd make in real life: $42,300 - $51,000

Long-term, Leslie Knope wants to be the first female president of the United States, but for now she works with a motley team at the Pawnee, Ind., Parks and Recreation Department. As a mid-level executive, she takes charge and never lets her passion for her hometown wane. What does Leslie Knope earn for keeping parks safe and available to everyone? PayScale estimates a salary range of $42,300 and $51,000 per year.

-- Find recreation director jobs

4. Jack Donaghy, "30 Rock"

Job: Executive Vice President

How much he'd make in real life: $250,600 - $348,500

He's decisive, conservative, slick, strong-willed, and he always seems to be in the way. Jack Donaghy, played by Alec Baldwin, is the vice president of East Coast Television. What does he earn for belittling Liz Lemon and wandering the halls at 30 Rockefeller? PayScale shows his Manhattan salary to range between $250,600 and $348,500 per year.

-- Find vice president jobs

5. Peggy Olson, "Mad Men"

Job: Senior Copywriter

How much she'd make in real life: $79,900

Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) of "Mad Men" has had a dramatic rise from secretary to junior copywriter to full-time ad copywriter. Her hidden pregnancy and struggle to have her work noticed have seasoned her and now she's getting some sass. What would an ad copywriter like Peggy earn in Manhattan today? PayScale estimates her pay would be $79,900 per year.

-- Find copywriter jobs

6. Michael Scott, "The Office"

Job: General Manager

How much he'd make in real life: $55,100 - $73,500

Oh so awkward and absolutely addictive, the character of Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, has audiences laughing and squirming in their seats. What did this "friend first, boss second" king of office humor earn for leading his team at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Penn.? PayScale estimates that his salary would be between $55,100 and $73,500 per year.

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The company is also promising that the merger would not result in any job losses for AT&T and T-Mobile USA wireless call center employees who are on the payroll in the U.S. when the deal closes.

AT&T's commitment to repatriate jobs comes as antitrust regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department ramp up their reviews of a combination that is certain to reshape the wireless industry's landscape.

AT&T, the nation's second-largest wireless carrier, is seeking government approval to buy T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest, from Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG. The cash-and-stock transaction would catapult AT&T past Verizon Wireless to become the nation's largest wireless provider, and leave Sprint Nextel Corp. as a distant number three.

Although AT&T said it has not yet determined where the new U.S.-based jobs would be located, it promised they would offer "highly competitive wages and benefits." The company hopes this message will carry weight in Washington, where job creation is a top priority for the Obama administration as the nation faces the possibility of a recession heading into the 2012 election.

"At a time when many Americans are struggling and our economy faces significant challenges, we're pleased that the T-Mobile merger allows us to bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and significantly increase our investment here," AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a statement.

Beyond the call center operations, AT&T has said it does anticipate some workforce duplication after the deal closes, but expects to make reductions largely through natural attrition.

Opponents of the proposed merger, including public interest groups and Sprint, insist it will lead to fewer choices and higher prices for consumers by eliminating a carrier that offers lower rates and less expensive plans than competitors. They also fear the deal could jeopardize Sprint's future as an independent company and ultimately lead to a wireless industry duopoly.

AT&T and T-Mobile argue that the acquisition would benefit consumers. They say it would lead to fewer dropped and blocked calls and faster mobile Internet connections for subscribers by allowing the companies to combine their limited wireless spectrum holdings at a time when both are running out of airwaves to handle mobile apps, online video and other bandwidth-hungry services.

They also say the transaction would position AT&T to cover more than 97 percent of the U.S. population with its new high-speed, fourth-generation wireless service.

Finding more airwaves to keep up with the explosive growth of wireless broadband services and ensuring that all Americans have access to high-speed Internet connections are both top priorities of the FCC and the Obama administration.

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1. Sick/disabled family members

If an immediate family member (or you) has a medical condition that requires regular doctor's appointments, you may well be entitled to up to 12 weeks a year of unpaid leave. This leave can be intermittent, which means that you get up to about 60 days a year or 480 hours. (That's a whole lot of doctor's appointments.)

This applies only if you need to miss work for a serious medical condition of a family member, AND your employer has at least 50 employees, AND you've been there at least a year.

If you know you will need this type of leave, make sure that you notify HR in advance so you make sure you're covered. If you think you qualify and they claim you don't, then contact an employment lawyer in your state to discuss your rights.

2. Sex stereotyping

There's no law making sexual stereotyping illegal, but it may fall within sex discrimination if your employer has 15 or more employees. For instance, the boss who assumes that, because you are pregnant, you won't want to come back to work, is engaging in sex discrimination. Men who are primary custodians of kids, but who don't get the same leave time and schedule flexibility as women, may have sex discrimination claims.

If the boss assumes that you, as a woman, will be the primary caregiver when you adopt and wont be able to travel, that may be discrimination. Men who take paternity leave also can't be treated differently than women who take maternity leave.

3. Family and medical leave

For a serious health condition or pregnancy of yourself or a family member, you may be able to get up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. This applies only if your company has at least 50 employees, and you've been there at least a year.

The leave can be intermittent, as I discussed above, or continuous. If you take twelve weeks and one day of leave, you're no longer protected. If you are protected under FMLA, you have to be restored to the same or equivalent position.

Even if you exceeded your 12 weeks, the employer can't use your leave to deny you an open position when you're ready to return. If you're pregnant, find out if you're covered or will be covered under FMLA.

4. Pregnancy

An employer can't fire, discipline, refuse to hire or promote you because you're pregnant, because of assumptions about the pregnancy and what you'll be able to do, or because of childbirth. This applies only if your employer has 15 or more employees.

If you need light duty, it gets trickier. They have to give light duty only if they give it for any other temporarily disabled employee.

Company insurance must cover pregnancy, and benefits for leaves must be the same as non-pregnancy leaves. Although you may want to wait until you're showing before you tell management, if you have morning sickness, you'd probably should make that known so they don't accuse you of excessive absenteeism. If you qualify for FMLA leave, you should apply for intermittent leave for morning sickness.

Once you return, breast feeding is also protected. If you need to take time to pump, the employer can't discriminate against you for this or deny you breaks to pump breast milk.

5. Marital status

Some states (e.g., Florida, Illinois, California, Maryland, and many others) and government employers have laws saying it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of the fact that an employee is married or unmarried. However, most employers still can discriminate against you based on being married to a particular person (such as anti-nepotism policies). If the employer has anti-nepotism policies saying that two spouses can't work together or can't supervise each other, they still can't discriminate based on gender (firing only the female employee, as an example).

You also can't be discriminated against based on your association with someone in a protected category, such as disability, race, religion, or national origin.

6. Harassment

Harassment based on any of these categories also is illegal. However, the Supreme Court says that you need to report such harassment if there's a published harassment policy. I suggest doing it in writing so that they can't deny you reported it, and give them a chance to correct the situation. If you fail to report it, you may be forever barred from suing for the harassment.

Once you're demoted, suspended without pay, denied a position or promotion, or terminated, the laws protect you, whether or not you report it to the employer first. If you've been demoted, denied a promotion, denied a position, suspended without pay, or terminated, and you believe it was because of family responsibilities, contact an attorney who handles employment law in your state to discuss your options.

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All of these activities, plus several others you may not have thought of, could earn you a tax write-off come April 15. Here's our list of the top 10 work-related tax write-offs.

1. Home office. This is a tricky one, but if you do it right, it can also be a big one. You may be eligible for the home office deduction if you use a designated area of your home as your principle place of business, provided you can show that you do the majority of your work there. If the home office is its own structure separate from the house, like a detached garage, the requirements are slightly less strict.

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