This week Star Tribune reporter Matt McKinney wrote the holiday bonus may be a practice of the past:

If you’re going home empty-handed from the company Christmas party, you’re like most of us. The holiday bonus is a thing of the past, or maybe just a thing of an overworked imagination: It never existed at half of the 350 companies surveyed in a recent poll conducted by Hewitt Associates.

Read the full story here.

What was your holiday bonus? A diamond or a lump of coal? Should companies give out a holiday bonus to their employees?

Today H.J. Cummins, who covers the employment beat for Star Tribune, opened her article with:

Minnesota’s job picture worsened Tuesday as new state data showed a double whammy of bad news during the past two months.

The state set a record in the wrong direction last month, as its 4.9 percent unemployment rate came in 0.2 percentage points over the national average, according to Tuesday’s monthly jobs report. In May, Minnesota’s jobless rate was worse than the nation’s for the first time in 30 years of record-keeping, then by 0.1 percentage points.

Read her full article here: Twin blows on the jobs front.

How is it going out there in the Minneapolis job market? Does this article feel accurate for what you experience? Do you struggle to find jobs?