Under heavy pressure from unions to rule as it did, the administration made its decision following a Labor Department assessment that public sector work, from cleaning streets to processing government forms, qualified as work under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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The major components to the education ecosystem include availability of affordable educational resources, discovery vehicles (comprehensive and efficient search), curriculum (goal) management, personal learning networks (social), facilitators, assessment, certification, auditing, efficient labor markets, and more.

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Putting all those measures together can provide a picture of trends that are developing over time, even if a single report can't provide a precise assessment in a particular month of the overall labor market.

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James A. Gross, professor of labor relations at Cornell University said using an outside auditor "frees the company of any independent supervision or assessment of what they are doing, " he said.

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