On the list of dog-friendly employers gathered by Dogster and Simply Hired are over 400 companies, including notable Internet giants Amazon and Google. Small companies of less than 50 employees make up the majority of the list, with California being the state with the most dog-friendly companies. Autodesk, a San Rafael-based software company, recently made headlines for being dog-friendly and making it onto Fortune magazine's 2006 list of the nation's 100 Best Companies to Work For. Dog-friendly policies appear to come with the territory when it comes to most pet stores, humane societies, groomers and vet offices. Local branch offices of real estate and retail outlets also litter the list.

(1) Read Don't Send a Resume, and do what the book advises. Thousands of people have used the book as a blueprint to getting hired.

(2) The recent college graduate, and the folks in publishing, should look at opportunities in any industry. Don't lock into one industry, especially if that industry is soft. Skills are much more marketable then people think.

(3) Work hard to get a job. It is hard work. Never give up. Don't despair. There is an organization that needs the job seeker.

Authored by Global Insight Inc., the report on annual wage growth prepared for the Conference of Mayors shows the average job in 2005 earned a salary of $43,500 -- a 4.6 percent increase over 2004. The spike in energy costs, however, wiped out almost one-third of those increased earnings.

"We have known for months that families have been feeling the pinch from rising cost of gasoline. Now because of the latest Metro Economy Report, we see that the high cost of gasoline has significantly impacted people's disposable income -- despite recent wage gains. This is concrete proof that our nation needs a comprehensive energy policy that addresses these new economic realities," said Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Total energy expenditures in the U.S. in 2005 represent 5.9 percent of all consumer spending last year; and energy expenditures in 2005 increased a whopping 20.3 percent over 2004. U.S. households spent $287 billion to fuel cars and trucks, and $225 billion for heating, cooling, and electricity -- an amount equal to 9.0 percent of wages and salaries.

This compares to $230.4 billion spent by U.S. households on gasoline to power cars and trucks, and $195.4 billion spent on other energy costs in 2004 -- an amount equal to 7.9 percent of wages and salaries.

The report also illustrates the effect of rising fuel costs on consumer wage gains in individual cities. For example, the Atlanta metro area had wage increases of $1,740, but saw 45.6 percent of that gain eaten up by gasoline price increases of $792.90. In the Miami metro area, wage gains were $2,109, but gasoline price increases consumed 48.2 percent, or $1,016.10, of the increase. In Detroit, gasoline price increases were 41.7 percent of wage gains, $686 out of $1,646 wage gains. The impact was greatest in Spokane, Wash., where an increase of $549.70 in the price of gasoline ate up 78.2 percent of the area's average wage increase of $761.

Mailing Unsolicited Resumes
Unsolicited Resumes are garbage, scrap paper, wasted effort and job-search (junk), according to Jack Chapman, author of "Negotiating your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute." Frank Traditi, Career Strategist and author of "Get Hired NOW!?" feels the same way. He says that people "treat their job search like a direct mail advertising campaign. They expect great response from blindly sending out hundreds of Resumes. They wait by the phone and it never rings. They sit at their computer and never get a response."

2. Looking for "Vacancies"
Many jobs are not advertised. Harvard's Mark Granovetter found that 43.4 percent of jobs are created for the applicant, often at the time of the interview. Traditi agrees. "It's no wonder that job seekers spend many months on their job search, or become so frustrated that they give up looking for work. They are looking in all the wrong places," he says.

7. Not Preparing for Interviews
Prospective job seekers always tell me that as long as I get them in front of the decision-maker they will take it from there. Most people think the purpose of an interview is to "interview." Wrong. The purpose is to eliminate your competition. If you don't know how to do this, then you will not be successful in securing the position or money that you want. You can never be over-practiced or over-prepared for an interview.

A quarter of employees watch or listen to streaming media at least once a week from work, and 18 percent have downloaded and stored nonwork music, photos and video clips, according to a telephone-based survey sponsored by Websense Inc., which makes software that helps companies filter and monitor Internet use.

Many companies have Internet policies that ban pornography but allow reasonable personal Internet use, such as e-mailing a doctor to schedule an appointment or buying a gift during a lunch break.

According to the survey, 61 percent of employees with Internet access have spent at least some time accessing personal sites.

The average is 3.1 hours a week, compared with 12.8 hours for work-related surfing.

Biotechnology has been around for centuries. From farming to food production and storage, biotechnology has touched our lives in numerous helpful ways.

As baby boomers age, there has been an increased demand for new medical procedures and equipment. As a result, biomedical engineering, a field that combines medicine with engineering and biology, is expected to grow in the next decade and beyond.

With an insight into both medical and engineering fields, biomedical engineers work effectively in hospitals, research facilities, academia, government regulatory agencies or as consultants.

Biomechanics, which applies biomechanical engineering to biological or medical problems, utilizes scientific principles to produce new ways of keeping the body functional and healthy. These include the creation of synthetic organs and joints, as well as machines that control body functions, imaging systems like X-ray and ultrasound, and the laser systems used in corrective eye surgery.

"We don't think doing things in India is a loss to the U.S.," said N.R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd., an industry leader in outsourced software services. Nor, he said, does he think doing things in the United States is a loss for India. Almost two-thirds of Infosys' revenue is generated in the U.S. market.

Murthy, 59, is lobbying students at the Stanford Business School, where he is a member of the advisory council, to come east - way east - to Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. With its Microsoft-like campus, Infosys provides support to big U.S. companies like Best Buy, Circuit City and even Microsoft. (Microsoft is a parent company of MSNBC.com.)

"To add significant value to corporations from a country like India is an exciting opportunity," Murthy said, "and to be part of that opportunity is one of a kind."

Infosys' profits are three times those of its U.S. competitors. One of the main reasons is salaries. The employees here - the software engineers - make about a quarter of the salary of someone doing the same job in the United States.

Director of Mobile Computing: Thanks to the BlackBerry, Treo, laptop and cell phone, every job can be turned into a 24/7 message fest.

So integral are these devices to work life now that when the maker of the BlackBerry was facing a potential shut down of its services this year, you would have thought the business world was bracing for a loss of electricity.

Upgrading all those portable lifelines to the office and keeping them in good working order has now become a full-time job with a big title.

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Residence Concierge: The latest trend in luxury travel is the luxury residence club, and one of the biggest players in the field is Exclusive Resorts. For a very, oh-so-pretty penny you can join the club and gain access to 300 multimillion-dollar luxury vacation homes around the world.

Membership includes the 24/7 services of a residence concierge. Far more than a hotel concierge, the residence concierge will arrange for everything from stocking your refrigerator, managing your household staff, arranging for all your transportation and setting up customized events for you and your family. After all, when in Tuscany, why not have cooking lessons given in the kitchen of your house?

The report showed one in six U.S. employees work from home at least once a week. Seventy percent of those telecommuters work for others, while 30 percent are self-employed, the chamber said, citing data from the Economic Policy Foundation.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed there were 25 million part-time workers and 10 million independent contractors. Some 10 million workers are self-employed and there are 24 million small businesses — 18 million of which are sole proprietorships with no employees, the report showed.

Direct selling for companies like Avon and Amway is done by 17 million Americans, often in addition to a regular job, it said, using data from the Direct Selling Association.

The Chamber said some people may fall into more than one category — such as a self-employed person who telecommutes or a part-time worker who also sells Avon products from home.

A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

"You can't put a dollar value on it. It's worth a lot more," said Kristen Krauss, 35, as she hurriedly packed her four children, all aged under 8, into a minivan in New York while searching frantically for her keys. "Just look at me."

Each ill person is expected to infect two others. Symptoms should appear within two days. Flu spreads most among school-age children — expect a 40 percent attack rate among them compared to 20 percent among working adults. But, with caring for sick relatives and stay-at-home precautions to avoid infection, 40 percent of the workforce could be absent for weeks at a time.

To minimize workplace infection, the report gives the most in-depth advice yet for businesses to take such steps as cleaning offices -- flu can live on hard surfaces for 48 hours -- and minimize employee contact by not shaking hands and staying 3 feet from co-workers.

But the 3-feet advice assumes flu only spreads in the large droplets of coughs and sneezes; tiny droplets that stay suspended in the air for long periods can spread it, too.

"Those are the kinds of uncertainties that make it hard to be very dogmatic" about health tips, cautioned Dr. John Treanor, a University of Rochester flu specialist.