Do you know what a work related injury costs? Do you really? Most people don't understand that when someone is injured at work there are many unnoticed costs: the employee loses wages, the employer loses productivity, rates for workers' compensation insurance are increased.... See the pattern? This infographic is a visual representation of why it is so important to prevent work related injuries - the costs are very high. The prevention of workplace accidents and injuries should be a main focus of employees and employers alike.
Click on Image to Enlarge.
The True Cost Of Work Related Injuries - An infographic by the team at SafetyVideos.com
Nearly half of adults in America report their financial situation is their biggest concern, yet only about a third of people have a long-term plan for savings and investment goals. High school students in the U.S. are less able than ever to properly handle money matters, even though the average employee is working longer hours for more pay. Two-thirds of do not prepare either a written or digital household budget. Only 30% of Americans keep a long-term savings plan. Factors that influence financial planning are education, political affiliation, and overall household income. When it comes to preparing a budget, 26% of persons with an educational level of high school or less write out their spending, whereas 38% of college graduates are keeping track. Persons who identify politically as "Conservative" keep a budget in 35% of polled results; "Moderate" persons are at 33%, and 26% of "Liberal" supporters write a budget. In regards to household income, it is the earners in the middle whom are least likely to keep tabs on where their money is spent. Financial stress affects everyday life by disrupting sleep schedules, increasing irritability, and making persons more susceptible to sickness. However, the overall percentage of income spent has decreased from 57% in 2009 to 32% in 2013, and the number of adults who pay their bills late has dropped from 33% in 2012 to 26% in 2013. A majority of teens say they want to learn how to manage their money, although only three states require at least one high school course devoted to understanding personal finance.
Yesterday, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan released a report from the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force highlighting all the ways we're helping the affected region-- and how communities can plan for the future.
Last week, the White House released a report highlighting the economic benefits of providing a path to earned citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the U.S. shadow economy.
Michelle and I know exactly how tough it can be to pay for higher education. By the time we finished paying back the loans we took out to go to college and grad school, I was on my way to being a U.S. Senator.
I believe that anyone who works hard should have the same opportunities that our educations gave us. That's why, as President, I've made it a personal mission to make higher education more affordable -- and why I'm going to be visiting school campuses later this week.
The facts are clear. Over the past three decades, the average tuition at a public four-year college has more than tripled. At the same time, many state governments are actually reducing their support for education, and many middle-class students are getting stuck with the tab. Today, the average student taking out loans to pay for education graduates with more than $26,000 in debt.
Just tinkering around the edges won't be enough: To create a better bargain for the middle class, we have to fundamentally rethink about how higher education is paid for in this country. We've got to shake up the current system.
That's why, starting Thursday, I will be embarking on a bus tour to offer my plan to make college more affordable, tackle rising costs, and improve value for students and their families. My plan includes real reforms that would bring lasting change. They won't all be popular with everyone --including some who've made higher education their business -- but it's past time that more of our colleges work better for the students they exist to serve.
Over the past four and a half years, we've worked to put college in reach for more students and their families through tax credits, improving access to financial aid, and new options that make it easier to repay those loans.
But if we're going to keep the doors of higher education open to everyone who works for it, we need to do more -- much more. And that's exactly what I'm going to be talking about this week.
Every two years, Moz runs a scientific correlation study to discover the qualities of web pages that have a strong association with ranking highly in Google. This year, for the first time, Dr. Matt Peters and the Moz Data Science Team measured the correlation between Google +1s and higher rankings.
The results were surprising.
After Page Authority, a URL's number of Google +1s is more highly correlated with search rankings than any other factor. In fact, the correlation of Google +1s beat out other well known metrics including linking root domains, Facebook shares, and even keyword usage.
Moz isn't the only one to discover this relationship. Searchmetrics, using a slightly different methodology, found Google +1s to be the highest-correlated factor they studied, and other studies have found similar results.
Here's the million-dollar question: Can Google+ activity actually help your pages rank higher?
Beyond correlation: Why it matters this time
Back in 2011, folks may remember the controversy that erupted when Moz found a similar correlation between higher rankings and Facebook activity. At the time, Google claimed they didn't use Facebook shares for ranking websites. Dr. Peters concluded that the relationship between Facebook activity and higher rankings was likely not directly related, but probably caused by overlapping factors such as links and high-quality content.
Now in 2013, there's strong reason to suspect it's different with Google+, and that the relationship between +1s and higher rankings goes beyond correlation into the territory of actual causation.
Not only is the correlation for +1s higher than that for Facebook activity, but the Google+ platform has qualities that make it a far superior platform for SEO. These qualities suggest sharing content on Google+ has the potential to influence search rankings in significant ways.
Intentional or not, the engineers who made Google+ built it for SEO. Consider the factors that make sharing content on Google+ far different than sharing on other social networks:
1. Posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately
One of the original goals for Google+ was using it to power real-time search after Twitter cut off Google's firehose access to its data in 2011. Since then, Google has been using Google+ to discover new content, and many web professionals have discovered that URLs shared on Google+ are crawled and indexed very quickly.
Compare this to Facebook, where because of privacy settings and restrictions on data sharing, it's not uncommon for posts to never be crawled or indexed by Google at all.
Unlike Facebook, which hides data from Google, or Twitter, which directs Google not to follow most of its links, Google+ data is immediately and fully accessible to the company that built it.
2. Google+ posts pass link equity
Pages and posts on Google+ not only accumulate PageRank, but because links to posts are followed, they pass link equity on as well.
Using the free MozBar, you can see all of the followed links on a typical Google+ page.
When you share a link on Google+, the anchor text becomes the title of the page you are sharing. Some important things to remember about followed links within Google+:
Only "shared" links (the links that show up beneath your post) are followed. Any external links you add withing the post body itself are nofollowed, so these don't pass any link equity.
For obvious reasons, uploaded images don't pass external link equity. Some people like to upload a screenshot of a page and then link to it in the body of the post. While a good image may increase post popularity and click-through rate, these posts do not pass link equity.
Certain links in your Google+ "About" page are also followed and pass link equity.
3. Google+ is optimized for semantic relevance
Unlike Facebook or Twitter, each post you make in Google+ has most of the characteristics of a full-blown blog posting.
Each post has its own URL.
The first 45-50 characters of the post appear in the title tag.
Just like a blog post, entries can be long and complex in order to explore a subject deeply. Various correlation studies have show a strong relationship between longer pages and higher rankings.
If a post is reshared, it can accumulate internal links from the Google+ platform, all with relevant anchor text.
Because of these factors, each post has the potential to send strong semantic signals to Google's search algorithm. This not only helps the post itself to rank in Google's search results, but potentially sends relevancy signals to a URL shared by the post.
What about Author Rank and Publisher Rank?
Many publishers have added Google+ authorship information to their websites in order for author photos to appear in Google search results. Another hope is that someday Google will use authorship information (and perhaps publisher information) connected to Google+ accounts to actually rank websites.
While there is no evidence that Google uses anything like Author Rank at the moment, many believe it will be here very soon. In the above video, Matt Cutts of Google suggests this is a path he'd like to see Google explore.
Roadmap to rankings: taking advantage of Google+ for SEO
While there are hundreds of ways to optimize your Google+ experience, the most important activities can be summed up by these nine points:
1. Start building relationships now on Google+
It's never too late to start. Google+ is a social network. Following great people, commenting on posts, and sharing great content not only helps to increase your own influence, but it can be extremely educational as well.
2. Post share-worthy content on Google+ to attract natural links
When you share content, don't just post a link and walk away. Add additional value with commentary and relevant information.
Consider theseexamples of long Google+ posts. Each acts like a mini blog post and adds highly shareable, linkable context. I don't recommend replacing your personal blog with Google+ entirely, but sometimes a few lines of context makes all the difference.
3. Add Google authorship information to your online content
Adding rel="author" to your website is a no-brainer. If you guest post or otherwise contribute content to other high quality sites, ask the publisher if they will add author markup to your bio. Kane Jamison recently did this for me when I contributed content to his blog.
4. Link out to all relevant profiles from your Google+ "About" page
Think of Google+ as a primary hub of your online virtual identity. Google offers you several places to link to other online profiles, sites that you contribute content to, and simply sites that you want to share.
5. Take advantage of rel="publisher" by connecting your website to your Google+ brand page
6. Make your content easy to share on Google+ with relevant social sharing buttons
You would think everyone wants to add social sharing buttons to their content, but some folks are just stubborn. Don't be stubborn.
7. Completely fill out your Google+ profile with relevant and engaging information
The information you provide in your profile influences how you show up in Google+ search results and also plays a role in whom Google suggests others to follow.
8. Make it easy for people to add you to your circles
Use Google's easy-to-create badges, or create your own to place on your own online profiles so that others can easily add you to their circles.
9. Make your posts public Posts shared privately don't pass the same juice as publicly shared post. For SEO purposes, you likely want your posts spread as wide as possible. Philipp Steuer made this great Google+ infographic simplifying the complexities of who sees your posts:
Entire books can now be written on using Google+ to boost your SEO efforts. In reality, there are exactly 3 articles that contain 99% of everything you need to know:
What's your favorite Google+ tip? Please share in the comments below.
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Instagram filters are crap, the death of Photoshop
Typing is mechanical, the deathknell for organic handwriting
Word processors are a cheat, the end of linear writing via the typewriter
eBooks are for losers, stealing the magic and majesty of the printed book
Blogging is impermanent, the end of thoughtful word processing
Tweeting is stupid, the end of intelligent blogging
Video is too easy, a cheap shortcut that destroys the essence of film
YouTube has no curators, the end of quality video
Wikipedia is an unproven shortcut, true scholarship is threatened
Selling by phone is for losers, closers show up in person...
Technology almost always democratizes art, because it gives us better tools, better access and a quicker route to mediocrity. It's significantly easier to be a mediocre (almost very good) setter of type today than it was to be a pretty good oil painter two hundred years ago.
And so, when technology shows up, it's easy to imagine that along with the old school becoming obsolete, the new school will be populated by nothing but lazy poseurs.
Don't tell that to Jill Greenberg, Sasha Dichter or Jenny Holzer.
... all this ending is leading to more and more beginnings, isn't it? It's not ruined, it's merely different.
The only candidate that makes sense is the candidate who will set a target date to end the Fed. Unfortunately, no such candidate is on the short list.
The choice is between Tweedle-Dee who rates to slosh money around even more than Bernanke in a futile effort to create jobs, and Tweedle-Dum who will do whatever Wall Street wants.
Practically speaking, is there really a difference?
The "Dums" Have It
Last week I thought it was something on the order of 50-50 (Tweedle-Dee heads we lose vs. Tweedle-Dum tails we lose) since both potential nominees are losers.
I now think it's more likely a case of Tweedle-Dum tails we lose, with Larry Summers playing the role of Tweedle-Dum.
President Barack Obama, who took office amid the collapse of the last financial bubble, wants to make sure his economic recovery doesn't generate the next one.
Obama this month spoke four times in five days of the need to avoid what he called "artificial bubbles," even in an economy that's growing at just a 1.7 percent rate and where employment and factory usage remain below pre-recession highs.
"We have to turn the page on the bubble-and-bust mentality that created this mess," he said in his Aug. 10 weekly radio address.
Why the Odds Changed
Yellen has all but guaranteed she will keep the money flowing faster than Bernanke, and coupled with the above warning from Obama about asset bubbles, the odds shift heavily towards Tweedle-Dum as Obama's choice.
Don't Fret, It Does Not Matter
Some will be delighted by this, others severely disappointed. But I am here to ease your mind. It does not matter. They will be equally horrendous.
The timing may change slightly , but the outcome won't.
"We have to turn the page on the bubble-and-bust mentality that created this mess" said Obama. Mish says "It's too late" the Fed has already re-blown bubbles in both stocks and bonds.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
A Cairo court ordered ousted President Hosni Mubarak freed from prison, a move that could complicate Egypt's increasingly violent political transition, while militants in Sinai killed 26 policemen.
The Cairo criminal court's order to free Mubarak threatens to inject new tensions in a nation convulsed by unrest that has killed almost 1,000 in the past six days. His potential release may spur arguments by the Muslim Brotherhood and others locked in a standoff with the government that the military-installed leaders want to restore the kind of police state Mubarak led.
"The fact that we're fighting the Brotherhood doesn't mean we'll allow the return of the Mubarak regime, simply because both regimes are two sides of the same coin," said Islam Hammam, a leader of the Tamarod group.
The court ruling comes at a difficult time for the government. International censure has mounted since it cleared out two pro-Mursi protest camps in the Cairo area on Aug. 14, touching off a cycle of violence from which the country has yet to emerge. About 900 civilians and 100 policemen have died since the camps were stormed.
In Sinai today, militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades killed 25 policemen near the border with the Gaza Strip. The Interior Ministry, in an e-mailed statement, described the incident as a "continuation of the terrorist crimes in Sinai."
Hours earlier, at least 36 Muslim Brotherhood members were reported killed during what the Interior Ministry said was an attempt to escape from custody while en route to prison. The cabinet said in a statement that security forces responded after prisoners took a police officer hostage. There was no way to reconcile the reports.
Brotherhood Ban Considered
The government is currently considering banning the Brotherhood. Hundreds of its members have been detained. Imams who criticize the army or state institutions in their sermons may be suspended, Ahram Gate reported, citing a statement from the ministry of religious endowments.
Powder Keg Setup
Inflation is rampant
The Muslim Brotherhood wants back in power
Mubarak wants back in power
The Brotherhood and Mubarak hate each other and both dislike the military
Criticizing the state is illegal
Civil war is underway
Prepare for the civil war to escalate.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Here are a few charts from reader Tim Wallace on spending, the deficit, and GDP.
Federal Spending as a Percentage of GDP
Spending and GDP in U.S. Dollars
Deficit Compared to Revenue
Wallace writes ...
Hello Mish
1. In the past 48 years we have averaged about 19.3% of GDP in federal spending. Since 2009, federal spending has averaged 22.7% of GDP.
2. The second chart shows 4th quarter GDP numbers along with the federal spending numbers. Note the huge surge in 2009 which has never been pulled back.
3. The last chart shows deficits as a percentage of revenue. Historically, the average is 17.5%. Since 2009 however, 52.7% of spending has been deficit spending. 57 cents of of every dollar spent was borrowed.
My contention is that there has not been an economic recovery, just deficit spending by government to cover up failed economic policies.
Tim
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Greetings from Prague, the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Actually, I am now back in the states, having returned from a fantastic European trip with Liz, on a delayed honeymoon following our June wedding.
Here are some images from Prague that I would like to share. Click on any image for larger, sharper view.
Prague Old Town Historic Square
Prague Old Town Historic Square
Charles Bridge and Pražský Hrad (Prague Castle)
Fireworks Over Charles Bridge
Stained Glass Windows in St. Vitus Cathedral
Liz in front of St. Vitus Cathedral
Nightime Scene from Charles Bridge
Liz and Mish Dining at Hotel U Zlatého Stromu
On a 12-day European trip, we also traveled to Munich and Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany. I will post some images from Germany shortly.
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