NEW YORK – Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners, technical staff and support personnel increased significantly in January, according to a report released this week.

The Conference Board’s latest “Help Wanted OnLine Data Series” reveals that online vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations experienced the largest increase of any job category in January, rising 78,500 to 604,400. The organization said the gain reflects increases in demand for registered nurses and family practitioners.

Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also rose in January, with job vacancies increasing by 16,600 to 143,300. C

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Well, it’s happened again. The financial dialogue has shifted from fear of deflation in the summer of 2010 to renewed inflation warnings as we greet 2011. And it’s no wonder. Prices for everything from food and clothing to gasoline and electricity are rising very quickly and inflation is one of the major factors that can put your retirement at risk.

Photo: Watching frogs boi

Rising commodity prices have led to what is being called the Food Crisis of 2011. Riots have broken out in many parts of the globe as citizens demand that their governments take action to curb the accelerating cost of feeding a family. Here in North America, a trip to the grocery store is weighing a lot heavier on our budgets these days as well. Gov

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DURING his state visit to America last week, President Hu Jintao of China offered some familiar banalities and worthy pieties, as this week’s Banyan remarks. But he also made a couple of hard, quantitative claims. In a speech on January 20th, President Hu said that cheap inexpensive imports from China had saved American consumers $600 billion over the past decade (2001-2010) and that exports to China had created over 14m jobs around the world.

Those figures were probably provided by the Ministry of Commerce, but I’ve no idea how they were calculated. (The figure of 14m jobs made an earlier appearance in a 2009 piece in the People’s Daily.) In this blogpost and a sequel, I’ll see if I can make sense of President Hu’s arithmetic.

I’ve received great help in this endeavour from Raphael Auer of the Swiss National Bank and Princeton University. In a paper*

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Still docked

LAST November marked the start of the tenth year since the epic, stamina-sapping Doha round of trade talks began. It was also when the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, joined by the heads of government of Turkey and Indonesia, asked a group of experts to work out how on earth to get a Doha deal done.

Led by Peter Sutherland, a combative former director-general of the World Trade Organisation and its predecessor body, GATT, and by a trade economist at Columbia University, Jagdish Bhagwati, the experts were due to issue a report on January 28th. That will be in the midst of the annual jamboree at Davos in Switzerland, where global bigwigs gather to chew over world affairs.

The report could cause a few attendees to choke on their Glühwein. It

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As I sat down tonight to work on our budget for February – using the awesome You Need A Budget – I noticed something:  I stand rather firmly on the middle ground.  Allow me to explain -

There are some folks who choose to live without television.  There are some folks who pay for every possible channel.

I have basic satellite service, with no premium channels.

There are some folks who do just fine without cell phone service.  There are some folks who have the very latest in cell phone technology – and the most expensive data plans to match.

I have a basic cell phone with a family share plan.

There are some folks who make everything they eat from scratch.  There are some folks who eat out – for every meal.

I carefully shop sales for groceries, but I eat out once or twice a week.

There are some folks who buy all of their clothing from thrift stores – and some who make their own.  There are some folks who wear nothing but designer clothes – and buy all of it brand new, on sale or not.

I buy new clothing that is comfortable, affordable, and durable.

I think you can see what I’m getting at.  When it comes to making choices about convenience goods and services, I’m not quite ready to give them up, but I don’t want to spend a whole lot on them, either.

Personal money management is really about finding balances.  We balance wants vs needs, time vs convenience, today’s desires vs tomorrow’s dreams, practical vs fun, even smart vs foolish.

This is an inexact science.  There are those who would analyze my budget – and wonder how in the world I could miss so many opportunities to save.  At the same time, I think that there are those who would look at it – and consider me thrifty.

I’ll probably never be a truly “frugal” person.  I prefer the convenience of certain products and services.  At the same time, I don’t think I’ll ever be defined as a “spendthrift” either.  Instead, I think I’ll always be firmly standing on the middle ground.