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Higher gas prices, of course, mean winners and losers in the job market. The winners are likely to include some oil company employers, alternative-energy employers, Houston recruiters, and telecommuters. It’ll be interesting to see whether the increased demand for public transportation will eventually mean more hiring at public transportation agencies.

Here in sprawling Los Angeles, though the Bel Air/Beverly Hills elite continues to incorrectly claim that “no one in LA takes public transportation,” the MTA says that “Metro Rail ridership in May shot up 6 percent over May 2007, one of the highest one-month spikes on record.”

In May, more than 7.6 million passengers boarded the MTA’s two Los Angeles subway lines and three light-rail surface lines. The organization employs about 10,000 people, and is hiring engineers, Oracle programmers, and others.

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–In Illinois, a home healthcare company settles a case regarding an employee allegedly not hired for being black.

–Meanwhile, Disney is sued for allegedly not hiring someone who didn’t have the “Disney look.”

–Who says the newspaper is dead? Well, I do, often. But Brian Hauswirth of the Missouri Department of Corrections tells me the paper’s the main reason why his career fair just surpassed all expectations. “When we ask people, ‘where did you hear about the career fair?’ the no. 1 reason is the newspaper,” he says. About 165 people attended the fair, he says, and about 103 applied for Corrections Officer 1 positions at a new prison. They still need to pass background checks, but Hauswirth says the results are “very promising.” Those with military experience make up about a quarter of corrections officers.

–Cellular South has completed a redesign of its careers site. It’s no EY site, but the company does use video to try to get applicants who fit its culture: fast-paced, challenging, competitive. It had Bernard Hodes (profile; site) help out (after realizing that consumer marketing and employment branding are cousins, not siblings, so Cell South can’t just use its in-house marketing folks), but still uses Sonic (profile; site) to track applicants.

Barb Miller, VP of human resources for the 1,000-employee company, one of the largest privately held wireless companies in the U.S., says the employees you see on the site are indeed employees, not actors, though Hodes and Miller’s team did discuss the idea of using actors (some Cellular South employees underperformed on camera, resulting in an SVP filling in at the end). Cellular South will measure results of the site through the “capture rate” (who leaves the site?); quality of hire (performance reviews, retention); traffic; and productivity (how many customers they can get with a certain number of employees). I asked Miller about the company’s snooze-inducing job descriptions. “You hit on something good,” she says. “That will be the next phase of what we do.”

Three new recruiting campaigns I thought I’d mention today … Microsoft, which we recently said is kicking off a campaign to showcase (and increase) its diversity, has launched a new site at youatmicrosoft.com. Despite the lame cliches and generalities (”diversity is critical,” “the best thing about Microsoft is the people,” etc.), the design is great, and who doesn’t love baby pictures? … Speaking of new sites, Spirit’s new careers page features the tagline “Dream Big, Make it Fly” — check it out with your sound on for full “whooshing-sound” effect. Spirit’s being helped out by its new RPO vendor The RightThing … Lastly, General Dynamics is touting its “Jobs That Rock” and is hiring engineers, particularly because of a big contract it got from the military to work on the Warfighter’s Information Network.

Word on the recruiting street has it that Austin Cooke, the VP of recruiting for VistaPrint, is getting promoted to VP of HR for all of North America.

Here’s a mini-clip from Cooke, talking at ERE’s Spring Expo about paying non-employees for referrals.