The pdf is lengthy, but it contains several reports (I am paraphrasing BLS’ descriptions of each report below):

• The births and deaths of business establishments in the United States- Basically a report that discusses the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) attempt to better measure business start-ups and failures (as an indication of entrepreneurship).  The bonus is that they provide lots of statistics on this topic.
• Expenditure patterns of young single adults: two recent generations compared- A report comparing the spending habits of “young, never-married adults in 2004-05 and their counterparts in 1984-85.”
• Business Processes and Business Functions: a new way of looking at employment- BLS created a new classification system and combined it with their Mass Layoff Statistics to gain a new perspective on employment.
• Service-providing occupations, offshoring, and the labor market- An analysis of service-providing occupations’ susceptbility to offshoring.

The Monthy Labor Report is produced by the U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics.  I am linking you to the December 2008 report.

Here’s the report: Guide to Green and Socially Responsible Investing

Enjoy!

SWAT- killing flies.

Totally not related.  Once again, I’m just trying to get your attention.  If you need to find a SWOT analysis on a company, use the TCU database, Business Source Complete. 

Here’s the quickest way to find a SWOT analysis in that database:  Type the ticker symbol of your company in the first search box and select “TK Ticker Symbol” from the drop down box.  In the next box, type: swot  (double click on image to see an example)

SWOT search example

Go to my delicious account (on the right hand sidebar of this page) to find more websites than what I showed at the workshop.  Just click into the “Career Information” tag bundle.

I’m still trying to figure out how to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a format that can be loaded into this blog.  If anyone knows, leave a comment for me (it won’t post immediately- our comments have to be approved due to all the spam we receive). Thanks!

Morningstar Report:  wheretoinvest09

Here are some quick, initial things to think about as you begin your research:

• Is the company public or private?  (hint: it is more difficult to find information on a private company)
• Is the company a subsidiary? (if so, financial information is typically reported under the parent company)
• What is the “official” name of the company? ex. Target Corporation, Ford Motor Company, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., etc.  (some databases won’t pull up information on the company unless you have typed in the “official name”)
• What is the address of the company’s headquarters?  (some databases list financial information on local units or franchisees OR 2 companies have similar names: either way, an address helps to verify that you are looking at the correct company)
• If it is a public company, what is the ticker symbol?  (some databases allow you to search by ticker symbol, and honestly, this is the fastest, easiest way to search)

I like to start my company research in Hoover’s Online because 1) the database is forgiving when it comes to the “spelling” of the companies name (i.e., I don’t have to type in the “official name” to get results) 2) the database easily answers all the questions posed above, and 3) I can get quite a bit of information from Hoovers including financial data, competitive landscape, biographies on key personnel, news, products, etc.

Next research post: I’ll talk about some useful TCU databases for researching public companies.

1.  If you go to the website, www.hoovers.com you will be able to get some information from the site; however, at some point, it will ask you for your credit card # in order to obtain the information you want. 

2. If you go into Hoover’s Online through the library’s databases, the TCU library has already paid for a deeper level of information than what you can get through the Hoovers.com website. 

Who wins the smackdown?  TCU library, of course.  Same Hoovers site, but MORE information!

If you want to read some of the articles about the survey, go to the TCU database, Factiva and complete the following steps (or take a look at the screen shot below):

1. Expand the ‘Source’ box by clicking on the + sign.  Click on ‘Group: WSJ Publications’ so that it appears as a pink link at the top of the source box.

2. In the drop down box next to ‘Date’, choose ‘enter date range’ and then enter 04/14/2008 in both boxes.

3.  In the free text box type “ceo compensation survey” (hint: be sure to use the quotation marks)

This should pull up approximately 8 articles to read. (double click on the image to enlarge it.)