UPI NewsTrack Business

Census finds no shortage of job-seekers

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Census Bureau says it is having little trouble finding census workers for its 2010 survey in a struggling economy.

With temporary jobs that pay between $10 and $20 per hour, applicants with advanced degrees and years of professional experience are flocking to sign up for the positions, which will give U.S. labor market a slight jolt next year, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

"What we're seeing now is blowing our socks off," Wendy Button, the decennial recruiting chief for the bureau, told the newspaper. "We're seeing a huge response to very little media."

Census officials told the Journal that when they hired address canvassers last summer they had to cut off applications two months earlier than planned due to the overwhelming response -- in Charlotte, N.C., for instance, about 40,000 people put their names on waiting lists to take the census' employment test.

The newspaper said the final number of hires won't be known until the number of U.S. residents who return their census forms is determined. The forms will be mailed out early next year. But California's census offices told the Journal they plan to hire about 110,000 workers between January and June

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Report: Hershey readies bid for Cadbury

NEW YORK, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. chocolate giant Hershey is considering launching a bid for control of British counterpart Cadbury, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing "people briefed on the matter," the Times said Hershey is considering a challenge to Kraft's existing $16.7 hostile takeover bid for the British confectioner.

The sources told the Times that any Hershey bid for Cadbury would have to be worth at least $17 billion and would represent a leap from the long-held financial conservatism of the U.S. chocolate maker, which has reportedly been working with JPMorgan Chase and the Merrill Lynch unit of Bank of America to obtain financing for the bid.

The newspaper said that while Cadbury and Hershey already have distribution ties, the U.S. company had assumed it couldn't compete with Kraft's offer. The financial markets, however, have loosened in the meantime.

Cadbury, which is reportedly reluctant to merge with Kraft because it views the conglomerate as a slow-growth company that would limit its opportunities, could be more receptive to an overture from Hershey, the Times said.

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Report: NBC's owners argue over valuation

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. cable giant Comcast's bid to acquire NBC Universal has been delayed by disagreements over the value of the company, sources say.

Citing unnamed "people close to the negotiations," the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that NBC Universal's U.S. and French owners are fighting among themselves over arriving at a valuation for the French firm's stake in the television and movie company.

NBC Universal's owners include General Electric Co., which holds 80 percent of the media company, while France's Vivendi controls 20 percent. Sources told the Times they are arguing over the value of the minority position held by Vivendi, and are still $500 million apart in reaching an agreement.

Another source indicated the two sides could be as far as $900 million apart in value.

Times sources said G.E. has placed a total value of $27 billion to $30 billion in NBC Universal, which would put Vivendi's share at about $5.4 billion.

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Economists: Stimulus package helped

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- A consensus has formed among U.S. economists that President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package, though messy, is working, analysts say.

They contend the package did indeed save the American economy from the free-fall it was experiencing a year ago and help it to grow again, or at least keep it from shedding more jobs than it would have, The New York Times reported Saturday.

"It was worth doing — it's made a difference," Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight of Lexington, Mass., told the newspaper. "I don't think it's right to look at it by saying, 'Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn't work.' I'm afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus."

"The economy was weaker than we thought at the time, so maybe in retrospect we could have used a little bit more and little bit more front loaded," added Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers.

But Martin Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist, told the Times, "There should have been more direct federal spending that would have added to aggregate demand. Temporary tax cuts and one-time transfers to seniors were largely saved and didn't stimulate spending."