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America's 53 million freelancers are their own bosses, but face not having health insurance and job security. Up to Date looks at the pros and cons of freelance work and organizations that provide support for independent workers. 

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Overland Park-based Sprint Corp. has begun a series of workforce reductions, according to documents the Kansas telecommunications company filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing didn’t say how many employees would be affected by the layoffs, which the company began to implement on Tuesday.

Last week, Overland Park-based Sprint Corp. officials indicated job cuts were coming in the fall.  

The extent of the layoffs at the Kansas company, which employs roughly 7,000 people locally, hasn’t been divulged, but at least one Sprint worker is taking the news to heart.

“Personally, I am cleaning everything out of my cube,” said Peg McMahon, a Sprint employee who responded to our Tell KCUR question of the week.

Missouri politicians – including Gov. Jay Nixon and Kansas City Mayor Sly James — were joined by more than 100 Burns & McDonnell employees in the engineering firm’s parking lot Thursday for a ceremonial groundbreaking of the company’s headquarter expansion.

The firm’s plans call for two building near its current Ward Parkway world headquarter site, adding an additional 450,000 square feet of office space.

You like Kansas City’s cost of living.

And many of you came to enjoy the arts and entrepreneurship scenes after relocating here for a job.

But when we took to social media and asked you what brought you to Kansas City and why you stayed, we were inundated with love stories that led to KC roots.

Such was the case for Dave Shuck, who moved to Kansas City in 2002 from San Jose, Calif., after tracking down a former friend from high school.

There are multiple tests out there that reduce your personality to a number, a one-word description, or a series of letters. Some say they’ve helped match the right person to the right job—maybe even to the right colleagues or romantic partners. But is personality simple enough to fit in such a box, or could a personality label lead people to change it, or live into it?

The Kansas City labor market deviates from the federal jobs picture in significant ways. That’s according to local and national reports released on August 2.     

Unemployment locally stayed stuck at 6.6 percent, where it’s been for some months, according to the Workforce Report by the Mid-America Regional Council.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported a slight drop in unemployment in July, but analysts were quick to point out most of the new jobs were either low paying or part-time.

As promised in May, Ford Motor Company began a third assembly line shift Monday at the Claycomo Plant.

The 900-worker expansion brings the total of rank and file UAW jobs to some 4,500. The emphasis of the additional team will be making the F-150 pickup.

Plant manager Dan Jowiski said potential workers went through pre-interview testing to see if they were qualified to do the job. That was in late April, just before Ford started beefing up the force.

Jowiski cited strong company ties to the area when the jobs were announced this spring. 

Speeches on the economy and the middle class in Illinois and Warrensburg, Mo. Wednesday were parts of a plan by President Obama.

President Obama said in Warrensburg he will take his message to a series of American towns in coming weeks.

In total, it was not a new theme. 

At University of Central Missouri the President talked of making a college education more affordable.

He also spoke of building more ladders for people to climb to the middle class, if willing to work for it. He said he would make early childhood education a priority.

The world’s largest furniture business group IKEA has started construction at its newest site, along the I-35 corridor in Merriam, Kan.

The Swedish retailer is billing itself as a destination attraction and promises 300 permanent jobs.

Five hundred construction jobs are expected in the 18 months to build the complex.

Company officials say further that retail employees working over 20 hours a week get full-time benefits, 401(k) matching and paid vacation.

Missouri and Kansas are using eight- and nine-figure economic development subsidy packages to steal jobs from each other. A new study finds no abatement.

What will the job market hold for 2013? Nobody has a crystal ball, but certain trends are giving us a hint.

Missouri’s unemployment rate is now at its lowest point in four years.

A change in U.S. immigration policy last summer has translated into 800 new jobs for metro Kansas City.  The work will be both sides of state line and pay no less than $27,000 a year.

In the next two installments of Solve This, NPR's series on the major issues facing the country, we'll examine each presidential candidate's approach to boosting employment. First, President Obama's strategy, then Mitt Romney's.

Job creation is the centerpiece of President Obama's campaign speeches.

About two dozen union men and women, supporters of President Obama’s reelection, went to the gates of a closed Kansas City steel plant to attack economic policies of Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney.

At 7.3 percent, unemployment in Missouri has dropped to its lowest level in 40 months.  That’s according to the latest monthly report from the state’s Department of Economic Development.

Businesses added just 119,000 jobs to their payrolls in April, a sharp drop from an estimated 201,000-gain in March, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report.

The private group's report is "a troubling sign" two days before the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues its figures on April employment growth and unemployment, The Associated Press says.

One hundred more jobs are expected to result from construction of a private-label bottled water plant in suburban Riverside. The town mayor says the development could lead to independence from casino income.

It's hard out there for a college grad.

The AP analyzed government data and came up with this stunning figure: "Half of young college graduates [are] either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge."

The whole story is worth a read, so we encourage you to click over, but here is the meat of the AP's analysis:

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Later this week, we get some key data to help judge the state of the nation's housing market. There are some early signs of recovery, but home prices are still falling in many areas, as NPR's Chris Arnold reports.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Tomorrow, we'll get the latest word on home prices from what's called the S&P Case-Shiller index. That keeps showing price declines in many areas. Though those price drops have been leveling off, so things definitely aren't as bad as they were.

Diane Turner can't find work. She spent 30 years managing dental practices in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, but lost her last job in that field a couple of years ago.

She worked for a while greeting customers at an auto body shop, but lost that job a year ago. "It was very depressing," Turner says. "I always worked, and I was always able to get a job."

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The nation's unemployment rate edged down to 8.2 percent in March from 8.3 percent in February, but only 120,000 jobs were added to private and public payrolls the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this morning in a report that was less positive about the labor market's health than economists had expected.

Prior to the news, forecasters had predicted BLS would say about 200,000 jobs were added to payrolls last month.

The monthly employment report Friday could help answer a key question about the economy: Will the recently strong job growth slow once employers finish replacing the people they fired during the depths of the recession?

The number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance stayed around a four-year low last week, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

It says there were 357,000 such applications, down 6,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 363,000.

Claims have been running at the lowest rate since March and April 2008 for several weeks now.

Jobs at U.S. businesses increased by 209,000 in March, according to a report released Wednesday by the payroll processing firm ADP. That's in line with expectations for the monthly jobs report due out Friday.

Analysts expect Friday's official employment report from the Labor Department to show that employers added 215,000 in March and that the unemployment rate remained at 8.3 percent, according to Bloomberg News.

On the plus side, the ADP National Employment Report issued this morning estimates there were 209,000 jobs added to private employers' payrolls in March. And ADP's data often are something of a predictor for what the Bureau of Labor Statistics will have to say when it issues its monthly numbers. Those March figures are due on Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

It used to be when you applied for a job, employers checked your references and reviewed your experience and called you in if they liked what they found.

Will 2,100 aerospace workers find other jobs in Wichita once Boeing closes its plant next year?

Thursday at 11:40 a.m. on Up to Date: Steve Kraske talks with Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer about Wednesday's big news that Boeing is pulling out of city after nearly 85 years.