Labor

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Valero Energy Corp.'s Delaware City, Del., refinery lost about $1 million every day this year. Falling fuel demand has forced refineries across the country to shut down and put hundreds of employees out of work.

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Construction employees work on an overpass over Highway 71 near the southwestern Missouri city of Lamar in 2009. The project was part of President Obama's stimulus package. (Associated Press File)

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** FILE ** Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) wields his old gavel as he talks about the issue of health care, during a press conference regarding H-232, the Affordable Health Care Act, on the west steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009. (Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)

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** FILE ** David Letterman admits during an October 2009 broadcast of "The Late Show" to having been sexually involved with some female employees. (AP Photo/CBS)

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For the first time since the 1980s, Social Security will dole out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next two years. Those deficits will add to the overall federal deficit. (Associated Press)

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**FILE** Employees work at a tire factory in Hefei, in central China's Anhui province, on Sept. 16, 2009. (Associated Press)

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The $45 million New Beginnings Youth Center in Laurel. (Photo courtesy D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services)

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Khavdal Khurman worked in a Soviet run coal mine outside Naliakh, Mongolia, for 11 years. The mine was closed down in 1990 after the democratic revolution, because of safety concerns. Now he picks through the detritus from surface coal shafts for fuel to heat his ger. He survives on a small pension from the government because of mining related illness, but believes the new democracy will lead to a better life for Mongolians. (J.M. Eddins Jr. / The Washington Times)

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Officials look over two light-rail trains involved in a crash in San Francisco on Saturday. Forty-seven people were injured in the crash. The city's transit workers union blamed a "medical condition" for the driver's loss of consciousness.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, is critical of the CBO analysis on the Democrats' health care bills. (Katie Falkenberg/The Washington Times)

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Former "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe

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Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney listens to testimony on employment at a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee, which she chairs. Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee want to claw back $21 million in excess profits from a spare parts manufacturer who they say has repeatedly fleeced the Pentagon. (Getty Images)

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Job applicants line up at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, N.Y., to apply for work in what is shaping up to be the longest recession since the Great Depression. Extended benefits are about to run out for thousands of the unemployed.

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** FILE ** Korrapong Techaarpornkul (seated) of Los Angeles gets help from Yolanda de la Fuente, an employment specialist who assists students in finding new career opportunities, at the Pasadena City College Career Center in Pasadena, Calif., in March 2009. (Associated Press)

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**FILE** In this photo from June 3, 2008, an employee takes a drag on a cigarette at Morgan's Place bar and restaurant in Harrisburg, Pa. (Associated Press)

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** FILE ** An employee collects carts outside a Walmart Supercenter in Kilmarnock, Va., on January 13, 2009. (The Washington Times)

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** FILE ** Thousands of people turned out Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009, for a federal government job fair at the Atlanta Federal Center (the old Rich's building) in downtown Atlanta. The fair, sponsored by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Atlanta District), was for jobs with federal agencies such as Justice, Labor, Commerce, Social Security, FBI, and Food and Drug, just to name a few. (AP Photo/The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Rich Addicks)

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We're making it needlessly difficult for Americans to save and invest. That hurts job growth and depresses wages. (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

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Passengers board an Amtrak Acela train bound for New York at Union Station in Washington in 2008. (The Washington Times)

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An estimated 1,200 undocumented migrants daily cross the Limpopo River, South Africa's equivalent of the Rio Grande separating the U.S. and Mexico. Most are from Zimbabwe, where shortages of food and fuel and an unemployment rate of more than 80% have sparked a steady exodus to the more stable and more prosperous South Africa. (Getty Images/File)