MLB Issues a Hiring Freeze

It's not exactly a secret that there are problems with the current state of the economy here in the United States. In recent weeks we saw that the government had to bail out banks all over the country, and just this morning they gave the auto industry another $17.4 billion to keep them afloat for a little while. Still, most people thought that sports would be the one area of the country's economy that was recession proof.

That theory has been proven wrong as well, as leagues like the Arena Football League have had to cancel their season, and even the NFL and NBA have begun laying off employees. It's also evident in baseball's free agent market where it seems that only the Yankees are comfortable handing out long-term big-money contracts right now. So while baseball teams may not be hemorrhaging money at the moment, the league is taking some precautions, and according to CNBC's Darren Rovell, they've issued a hiring freeze.

CNBC has exclusively learned that Major League Baseball had a meeting with its employees yesterday and announced to its staff that, in order to deal with the current economic environment, it was undergoing a hiring freeze, freezing salaries and taking 20 percent of employees' vacation time for 2009.

The good news is that there won't be any layoffs stemming from this hiring freeze, though no one can be certain that there won't be in the future.