Layoffs put people into the job market, adding to job seekers and making it easier for employers to offer lower wages. We might call that the obvious effect, but savings from layoffs have another effect: an increase in uncompensated work.

Teachers have never been hourly rated employees. Phrasing in teacher contracts assures long work hours. "Teacher shall perform such duties as deemed necessary, shall attend all assigned meetings, shall be present at school during school hours, shall be present at school or other location outside school hours as directed in connection with school events or activities."

With a contract clause like that, school officials can save money giving teachers more students and more work, like suggesting they may need to empty a few wastebaskets and fill out or file a few extra forms; work formally done by those laid off janitors and office staff.

Overtime pay rules in the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, however, require time and a half pay for hourly rated employees working more than 40 hours a week. But, over the last 8 years many new exemptions and amendments were made to overtime work rules. Executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees paid on a salary basis can be exempted from over time pay. The new rules can be found on the U.S. Department of Labor website.

The 40-hour work week has been the standard full time work week for more than eighty years, but pressuring people to work additional hours makes it easier to turn layoffs into a permanent loss of jobs.

The worst abuses are apparently in the managerial ranks, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a decline of 2 million managerial jobs at establishments since 1999. Managerial jobs for 1999 are reported at 8,063,410; managerial jobs for 2007 are reported at 6,003,930. Three people working 40 hours a week is the same as two people working 60 hours a week but with a one-third savings in labor costs.

My superintendent's cost cutting plan comes right as the Congress debates billions of dollars in bailouts for defaulting homeowners, bankrupting car companies and failing banks. Maybe they could pass of few million along to my school district, but it will not matter much unless they get to the real problem: wages and employment.

They could start with the Fair Labor Standards Act and fix those destructive overtime rules.

Fred Siegmund covers America's jobs as part of work doing labor market analysis and projections for a client base of recruiters, trainers and counselors. Visit him at www.americanjobmarket.blogspot.com

The magazine doesn't go deep into why it suggests FNBO as the best options, but it does offer up this:

Earn 3.5% on your FDIC-insured savings at www.fnbodirect.com. You pay just $1 to open an account with no maintenance fees and no minimum-balance requirements. You can link the account to as many as three others, including FNBO's bill-payment account. Use electronic transfers to move your funds and your ATM card to withdraw cash.

FNBO has shot on the scene in the past 18 months, launching with a 6.00% APY account and promoting a Pay Yourself First contest on YouTube.

FNBO's current rate is 3.25% APY.

These are some interesting results — but, like Bankrate's recent survey, it's not entirely clear if this is discussing online banking from brick and mortar banks or online-only banks.

For example, easily more than 1% of those surveyed (probably) have opened a new account at an online-only bank. But at their brick and mortar's online site, they may not have.

How do these survey results compare to your online banking habits? Let us know in a comment below.

Most years, I get caught up in the consumerism, but this year — there's just not that much that I need. Add in the fact that most deals aren't actually that great, and it just makes sense to save and not spend.

This week, we participated in the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by The Digerati Life. Fred's post on Alan Greenspan and economic regulation was included.

Check out some of the highlights from the carnival.

Investing vs. Paying Down Debt - Which Way Should You Go? - Personal Finance Analyst

Personal finance isn’t always crystal clear and making a decision between heftier debt payments and investment is a perfect example of that.  In order to get the right answer, you’ll need to compare the actual “dollars and cents” value of each option and to assess that result in terms of your own personal outlook and money management skills.

Get a higher return for your money - Blogging Banks

Most individuals have money in regular checking accounts which they use for their regular day to day expenses and deposits. The main issue with these regular checking accounts at banks is that they pay very little in interest rates – sometimes lower than half a percentage point per year.

Free Online Personal Finance Tools - Hustler Money Blog

Here’s a complete free list of online account aggregation services for personal finance.

While that's a pretty significant drop, the rate is still pretty competitive with a number of the other accounts out there.

Most of the online banks have been dropping their rates, with HSBC, FNBO and E-Loan all reducing their APYs in the past month.

ING Direct recently lowered its APY to 2.75%. Dollar Savings Direct has stayed at 4.00% APY. FNBO is currently at 3.25% and HSBC is at 3.00%.

I say back in the news because there was an article about Circuit City in the Washington Post back on March 29, 2007 titled Circuit City Cuts 3,400 'Overpaid' Workers.

The cuts came out of 40,000 in-store jobs; 9 percent of the company's in-store workforce. The firings were not related to job performance, but came as part of an effort to cut costs and improve the bottom line.

They were going to save on labor costs by firing their "overpaid" staff and rehiring new sales people at lower wages. That may sound like a way to save money, but now, 18 months later, there is good reason to doubt they saved any money.

Circuit City is part of retail trade in a sector called Electronics and Appliance Stores where salesmanship is important. Circuit City buyers may need to learn about complicated electronics products and how they work before they make up their mind.

Retail Salespersons do selling, which means explaining and demonstrating products, answering questions, knowing warranty terms or other product information.

In other retail sectors like gasoline stations and grocery stores, selling and salesmanship are not as important. People know if their gas tank is empty and they buy their pasta and potatoes from a cashier, not a salesperson.

Explaining and selling takes time, skill and experience and so more and better paid retail sales jobs are needed at electronic and appliance stores than gasoline stations or grocery stores.

The need for salesmanship is partly reflected in staffing where retail salespersons and their supervisors make up more than 40 percent of retail jobs. Staffing at gasoline stations contrasts with electronics and appliance stores where more than 60 percent of jobs are cashier, but virtually none are retail salespersons.

The Washington Post article informed readers that Circuit City dismissed their sales staff earning wages over of $15.50 an hour, or their most experienced and longest tenured sales staff.

We can be sure Circuit City management saved on wages, but wage savings are not cost savings unless they lower costs per dollar of sales. Ignoring productivity tells us that Circuit City management did not know the meaning of overpaid, or even how to save.

True, the economy is doing poorly now, which is probably part of Circuit City problems, but as the saying goes, "They were penny wise and pound foolish."

Fred Siegmund covers America's jobs as part of work doing labor market analysis and projections for a client base of recruiters, trainers and counselors. Visit him at www.americanjobmarket.blogspot.com

I'd been thinking about doing it for awhile now, but finally made the request and have moved all of my money to ING Direct.

I've been fed up with E-Loan's need for control, lack of customer service, and crappy introductory rates.

Despite being one of the most promising online savings accounts when it first came out, E-Loan couldn't compete on a customer-friendly level with other online banks.

Not telling your customers when the rate changes is cheap.

Not allowing your customers to move their money to more than one bank every 4 months is controlling.

Not letting new savers get the same rates as those with biggers coffers is discouraging.

Even though they offer a lower rate, ING Direct lets you do whatever you want with your money.

Remember: it's your money. Don't let someone else control it.

That's why I closed my E-Loan account.

In funds, we're talking about savings, not mutual funds. Examples:

• car
• emergency
• college
• retirement
• house
• vacation
• PlayStation

I'll start off. In our savings onion, we currently have 5 funds:

• Emergency
• Housing
• Roth IRA (2)
• 401(k)

We used to have a car fund, but we got rid of that when we bought a car! (More on that soon.)

How many funds do you have? Tell us in a comment below.

An election/economy post — 4 Tips for Shopping at Thrift Stores (Or How Not to Spend Like Sarah Palin) — was included in this week's Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by The Sun's Financial Diary.

Check out a few of the great posts from the carnival:

Manage Money - Outsource Your Money Handling Tasks - Minding My Own Business

In today’s world of the Internet, e-commerce and e-banking there exists another viable option. You can outsource the tedious tasks. I don’t mean hire an employee to pay your bills, but rather take advantage of modern day conveniences to automate routine Money Handler tasks. Doing so will enable you to spend your valuable time being a Money Leader and a Money Manger instead.

How Much Should You Pay to Save Time? - Political Calculations

Jim, as we recently noted in the latest edition of OMM, saved a lot of out-of-pocket money by butchering his own chicken, but wondered if it was really worth his time to do all the extra work, rather than just buying the various chicken parts already prepared. Cathryn wondered the same thing about buying pre-peeled onions, pre-manufactured lunches for children, and baking a pie from scratch.

We've set up the tool to answer Jim's question about whether or not it's worth his extra time to do his own chicken butchery, but you're more than welcome to change the input values according to the make-vs-buy scenario you may be more interested in.

10 Ways to Become Financially Independent - Happiness is Better

There are many ways to becoming financially independent. I don’t think most people become financially independent through any single method. I’m sure it’s an iterative process that usually takes many years, at least 10 (I threw that number out there), to complete.

The problem with promoting an even distribution of wealth is that it is a euphemism for Marxist "from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need."

Doing a quick Google search, I could not find a global per capita income, but the per capita income for the U.S. in 2006 is $44,970. That's less than what I'm making now, and I'm not in evil top 2% of income earners.

Assuming everyone continues to be as productive (or unproductive, as the case may be) as they are now, everyone will receive a paycheck for $44K per year. That might be great to some high school dropout living off of welfare, but do we really expect productive people who studied in school and work hard for their >$44K/yr job to continue working that hard?

If the most you can earn is $44K/yr, are you going to work more than you absolutely have to to get your $44K paycheck?

Distribution of wealth, especially when forced by the government; e.g., USSR, N. Korea, Cuba, Maoist China, et al.; is a sure recipe for disaster.

It appears to argue that it is wrong to have social policies that reduce the inequality of income. It calls such a policy Marxian.

Marx was a 19th century guy who looked at the poverty and gross inequality of income he saw during the industrialization period in England. He could have said it is unfair, but instead he wrote a long boring book trying to convince people there is a natural and scientific reason that makes income inequality a bad thing.

Now we have free enterprisers that look at corporate CEOs who help themselves to millions of dollars of corporate funds. They could just say it is fair, but instead they write long boring books trying to convince people there is a natural and scientific reason that makes income inequality a good thing.

Truth is they are all posers and bluffers. Today’s free enterprisers are doing exactly what Marx did, only with the opposite conclusion.

If you think income inequality is a good thing you will have to convince people the current inequality is fair and should not be changed. Good luck, but my vote is no.