Labor Department News Releases Update

Jeffrey Angstadt didn’t want days off to relax. In September 2010 and over the months that followed, the furniture sales executive told his employer, Staples Contract and Commercial, Inc., a subsidiary of Staples, Inc., that he needed to take leave to care for his critically ill wife. While Angstadt was eligible for federal workplace protections for those coping with the illness of a family member, no one at Staples notified him as the law requires.

More than 9 million people are released from the nation’s more than 3,000 county and local jails every year, the U.S. Department of Justice reports. Many of these individuals have few job skills and face difficult barriers to stable employment. Without a strong support system or a steady job, many once incarcerated people are likely to commit new crimes and return to jail: a cycle of recidivism that recurs across the country.

In the week ending May 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 276,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 2,000 from 282,000 to 284,000. The 4-week moving average was 274,750, an increase of 2,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 500 from 271,500 to 272,000.