NOTEWORTHY.

• Position: Congress' job performance, cost of living in the United States, job crafting

In this era of hyperpartisanship, Americans still agree on one thing: they do not like the job Congress is doing, and the reason is that citizens feel House and Senate members are listening to the wrong people, namely donors and elites. Sarah Anderson, associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, calls the bipartisan dismay striking given the deep political divide in the country. "Normally, a person's political affiliation accurately would predict how he or she feels about politics --always, and it doesn't here. It's simply not a factor. It's just shocking, actually, given the partisan polarization right now."

The tenure of Pres. Donald Trump has coincided with a fall in the cost of living for cities throughout the U.S. Dallas, Texas, and Philadelphia, Pa., saw the sharpest drops, each falling 36 places, while California's Los Angeles (61st) and San Francisco (63rd) both have dropped out of the top 50 most-expensive cities in the world, according to the annual survey published by ECA International, London.

"Job crafting is a set of techniques for helping you reconfigure the elements of your job to spark greater engagement and meaning," explains Justin Berg, professor at the Stanford (Calif.) Graduate School of Business. 'We've studied three different forms: task crafting is about retooling the activities included in your job; relational crafting is about revamping your interactions with others; and cognitive crafting is about reframing how you view your tasks and relationships."

Two important issues for workers that often are a source of confusion are "employment at will" and "right to work" laws, relates Paula Brantner, senior advisor at Workplace Fairness, Silver Spring, Md. Employment at will describes a relationship where an employer can terminate a workers employment for any reason or for no reason --just not an illegal reason. Right to work laws, meanwhile, permit workers who...