It doesn't have quite the magnitude of this week's earthquake or the gale-force winds of Irene, but another disaster threatening Washington this week is the stark jobs landscape. The political pressure to find a solution to the sluggish employment recovery is beginning to reach crisis levels, even though the most recent unemployment figures may have been inflated by Verizon workers who went back to work  this week. Even the jobs czar may be out of a job before long. President Obama sought advice this week from Warren Buffet and Ford CEO Alan Mulally in advance of the unveiling of his employment plan scheduled to be announced after Labor Day. Obama's plan will involve a job training program for the long-time unemployed. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney will release a jobs plan of his own on Sept. 6.

Health care reform news this week

McKinsey vindicated? In June, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company released a report stating that up to one-third of employers will drop their health coverage once the state-based insurance exchanges take effect in 2014. McKinsey took a lot of heat for their questionable methodology and the findings were largely discredited. Now, separate findings released by consulting firms Towers Watson and Mercer lend credibility to McKinsey's findings that health reform may encourage firms to drop their employer-sponsored health plans. According to Towers Watson, 1 of every 10 mid or large-size companies plan to drop their health coverage in 2014, and another 1 in 5 companies is unsure of what they will do. Mercer findings also confirm that roughly 10 percent of companies will stop offering their employees health coverage in 2014.

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What would Perrycare look like? Now that GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry has taken the lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, many are questioning Perry's stance on health care beyond his trademark knee-jerk repudiation of Obamacare. As governor of Texas, Perry has moved to block the implementation of the new health law, despite the fact that Texas stands to gain coverage for 4 million uninsured residents. On Wednesday, the Perry campaign released a sketch of the candidate's plan for health care. Perry's plan goes into little detail beyond advocating for a complete repeal of the health law so that states could address the issue without federal interference.

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Retirement news this week

What retirement? The Wall Street Journal reports that the number of working Americans over the age of 65 has increased 58 percent this decade and it appears that this number will continue to climb. A large number of Americans were "woefully underfunded" for retirement even before the recent stock slide.

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HR / Benefits news this week

The HR nightmare in Alabama. Alabama's immigration law, set to go into effect in September and said to be "the most comprehensive and strict piece of immigration legislation that's been passed anywhere in the U.S.," is creating a nightmare scenario for HR pros. Employers in Alabama are struggling to understand how to comply with their newly mandated responsibilities to verify they don't have undocumented workers on the payroll. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has announced its own immigration reform plans that could cancel the deportation and authorize the employment of up to 300,000 immigrants across the country facing deportation.

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