[No end in sight for nurse shortage]

A recent federal report on the nursing shortage says the situation is about to get a lot worse. The shortage, the report says, will reach 10 percent by 2008, 20 percent by 2015 and 29 percent by 2020. In 2020 the shortage is projected to be five times worse than it is now. (Source: The Dallas Morning News)

[Salaries thawing out in 2003]

Hewitt Associates finds that only 1 percent of organizations plan a salary freeze in 2003, down from 10 percent in 2002. Hewitt surveyed 1,045 companies in the United States and projects the following salary increases for 2003:

• Salaried, exempt employees: 3.9 percent
• Salaried, non-exempt employees: 3.8 percent
• Non-union, hourly employees: 3.8 percent
• Executives: 4.1 percent

Increases during 2002 were in the 3.5 to 3.8 percent range. In 2001, salary increases were closer to 4.0 to 4.5 percent. Employees in some large metropolitan areas such as Houston,
Milwaukee, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., are likely to see bigger increases next year. (Source: Workforce)

[Working parents face runaway child-care costs]

In a year of deflation fears, one consumer cost is growing fast - child care. For many families it is outstripping housing, food and even a college education.

Runzheimer International, a Rochester, Wis., relocation consulting firm, says child-care prices in 75 cities rose an average 6.4 percent last year, more than twice the consumer-price inflation rate, based on a survey of several hundred child-care centers. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

[Just hire me already!]

The tightening job market has driven candidates to new extremes in their search for work, including sending cakes and flowers to hiring managers, passing out résumés on street corners, and even taking jobs for no pay.

Tiffany Fox of Houston got fed up after months of failing to land a job in the usual ways, so she made a sign that read "Hire Me" and stood on a busy corner. Fox handed out information with her phone number and background.

She wound up getting a sales job for a telecommunications firm after a manager drove by and asked, "Is this for real?"

"Desperate times call for creative measures," says Fox, who got more than 150 phone calls, 10 interviews, and "quite a few marriage proposals." (Sources: USA Today and HRnext)