Employers continue to close operations and slash jobs -- with as many as
14,000 more cut on Wednesday, bringing the week's total to close to 100,000 jobs lost.
Workers from all spectrums found out they may be losing their jobs -- from coffee baristas
to pharmaceutical workers to airplane manufacturing employees to corporate staffers -- as more companies joined
the chorus of employers facing mounting difficulties in a tough economic market.
Even as House Republicans were continuing in their partisan ways, voting against a
stimulus package that many mainstream economists support, Starbucks, Abbott Laboratories,
Allstate, and Boeing announced their plans. So, while the politicians in Congress stick to their
tired ways of voting party line, it's the workers and job-seekers who suffer the
consequences... the politicians don't have to worry about their jobs -- until the next election,
that is.
Starbucks, which previously announced plans to close 600 underperforming stores,
announced it will also close 200 locations in the U.S. and 100 overseas -- eliminating
6,000 store positions and 700 corporate jobs
Boeing Co. says it will cut an additional 5,500 jobs this year, bringing its total cuts to 10,000 as earlier this month,
it had announced plans to shed 4,500 jobs in its commercial airplanes division. These newly announced job cuts will be
across various other parts of the company.
In addition, Allstate Corp. announced it would be cutting 1,000 jobs over the next two years, while AOL
announced plans to cut 700 jobs, and Abbott Laboratories said it would be cutting 200 positions.
According to CNN.com, the three-day total for this week brings the total number of job cuts to more than 100,000.
January 27, 2009
In just two days, 50,000 jobs are cut by U.S. employers, with Michigan, Rhode Island,
and South Carolina leading in the unfortunate race of states with the highest unemployment rate.
Early yesterday, Caterpillar (20,000 jobs cut), Sprint Nextel (8,000 jobs cut), and Home
Depot (7,000 jobs cut) made their announcements of job eliminations.
Later in the day, Texas Instruments announced plans to cut 3,400 jobs, while General
Motors announced job cuts totaling 2,000 jobs. Still later, Pfizer announced,
as part of its acquisition of Wyeth, that it would cut the combined workforce by some 19,500 employees.
Today brings news that Corning, Inc., plans to slash 3,500 jobs -- about 13 percent of
its workforce. And as earnings reports are continued to be released this week, expect
even more announcements of cuts by other hard-hit companies struggling to survive in this
weakened global economy.
Also today, the U.S. Labor Department released the latest unemployment data for all 50 states.
The largest month-to-month decreases in the level of employment were reported in
California (78,200 jobs lost), Michigan (59,000 jobs lost), New York (54,000 jobs lost),
Illinois (36,000 jobs lost), Indiana (35,300 jobs lost), and North Carolina (34,900 jobs lost).
Here are the top 10 states with the highest and lowest unemployment rates, as of December 2008.
The national average for December is 7.2 percent.
It's going to be a long week of bad employment news, starting with more
company announcements of massive job cuts.
While tomorrow will bring the U.S. Department of Labor's report on state unemployment
rates in December, the week starts off with announcements from major companies about
further job cuts -- totaling 35,000.
Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining machines, announced
today that it was cutting almost 20,000 jobs -- laying off 17,000 workers and buying out 2,500 others.
Sprint Nextel Corp., one of the top telecommunications companies in the U.S. also announced today that
it will purge 8,000 jobs, or about 15% of its workforce -- including about 850 positions set to be eliminated
under a voluntary buyout program that began late last year.
Home Depot, the top home improvement retailer, also announced today that is is cutting 7,000 jobs --
resulting from a combination of reducing its support staff and completely closing its
EXPO Design Center stores, as well as five YardBIRDS stores.
Late last week, Harley-Davidson, Inc., said it would close plants and cut 1,100 jobs.
As earnings reports continue to be released this week, expect more companies to announce
job cuts as a way of reducing costs -- certainly short-sighted in light of massive top
management paychecks and big spending over the past several years.
On the plus side, in the most recent Fortune list of best companies to work for,
six were recognized for never having massive layoffs in response to weak business
environments, including Nugget Market, Aflac, QuikTrip, Scottrade, NuStar, and Stew Leonard's.
(Read more
about each of these employers here.)
In the midst of more job cut announcements, Fortune publishes its
annual list of best companies to work for (and some are actually hiring).
The magazine's annual list of the
best companies for people to work for is
both a refreshing moment in the middle of gloom, but also a reminder that even
good companies can suffer bad times. But the big news of the list is that
perennial best company Google has slipped from the top of the list (just down
to number four), having been replaced by NetApp, a storage and data management solutions
company with a U.S. workforce of about 5,000 employees.
Sadly, on the same day as Fortune published their report,
the list of companies announcing layoffs continued, with Microsoft announcing today it will
cut 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, while United Airlines stated that it will
cut an 1,000 additional jobs by the end of 2009. Huntsman Corp. said it will cut
1,175 jobs by the end of the year, Intel announced job cuts of 6,000, and Eaton Corp.
stated it will cut 5,200 jobs.
Other companies that have announced job cuts since the start of 2009 include:
Alcoa Inc. -- 15,000 jobs
Boeing -- 4,500 jobs
Cessna Aircraft -- 2,000 jobs
Dell -- 1,900-3,000 jobs
EMC Corp. --2,400 jobs
Hertz Global Holdings -- 4,000 jobs
MeadWestvaco Corp. -- 2,000 jobs
The best news from Fortune's Best Companies? A number of them are
actually hiring! See the list here:
20
Employers Who Are Hiring.
January 20, 2009
President Obama promises a stimulus plan that will create or save as many as
many as four million jobs by the end of next year.
With his inauguration, President Barack Obama will go about tackling the work
of helping American workers find new jobs or keep the ones they have.
With a proposed combination of funding and tax cuts and incentives, the President's
plan would save or create at least 3.7 million jobs -- but perhaps as many as 4 million --
nearly 90 percent of them in the private sector, by 2010.
As outlined by his economic team, here is the breakdown of the jobs created or saved
in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan:
Total Jobs
Direct
Indirect
Energy
459,000
305,000
153,000
Infrastructure
377,000
236,000
142,000
Healthcare
244,000
166,000
78,000
Education
250,000
166,000
83,000
Protecting Vulnerable
549,000
140,000
409,000
State Relief
821,000
442,000
379,000
Making Work Pay Tax Cut
505,000
0
505,000
Business Tax Incentives
470,000
0
470,000
All Components
3.675,000
1,456,000
2,219,000
In the meantime, as Congress debates these issues, it's best to continue to
protect your job if you have one, while looking to a future that will slowly
bring back a stronger job market for job-seekers. For those who are
unemployed or underemployed, now is the time to consider survival jobs
or other temporary employment until more jobs open in your career field.
January 9, 2009
More than half a million Americans lost their jobs in December, making 2008 one
of the worst years for job losses.
The Department of Labor announced today that employers cut 524,000 jobs last month --
the 12th consecutive month of job losses, with almost 2 million jobs lost in the last four months
of 2008 and a total of 2.6 million jobs lost for all of 2008 -- the highest total job-loss for a
calendar year period since 1945, the year World War II ended.
The nation's unemployment rate jumped from 6.8 to 7.2 percent -- a 16-year high. The unemployment rate
for teenagers went to 20.8 percent. Women had the lowest unemployment rate, at 5.9 percent.
Among those still employed, more than 8 million people were underemployed, working
less than full-time for economic reasons -- the highest ever on records that date back to 1955 --
raising the so-called underemployment rate to a record 13.5 percent.
Job cuts were widespread across most industry sectors. Manufacturing lost a whopping 149,000 jobs,
the leisure and hospitality industries jobs declined by 22,000, construction cut another 101,000 jobs,
retailers slashed another 66,600 workers, professional and business services lost 113,000 jobs,
transportation and warehousing declined by 24,000, and financial services jobs fell by 14,000.
On the plus side, healthcare jobs continued to grow, with 32,000 new jobs -- bringing the total
to 372,000 new jobs added in healthcare in 2008. And another 7,000 new government jobs were
created.
We have to hope that 2009 will be better -- not right away as job losses are expected for at least
the first half of the year as companies continue to announce cutbacks and layoffs -- and that the
government's actions will improve private-sector employment.
January 1, 2009
It's going to be a rough year for workers and job-seekers, but there's also plenty
of hope for an economic turnaround and a slowly returning job market.
There's no question that the QuintCareers.com team is full of optimists who believe that
some of the changes already made by the government and the massive incentive and stimulus
package that President-Elect Obama wants to implement will start having a positive impact
on the U.S. economy -- somewhere toward the middle to end of 2009.
That said, we still face a minimum of six months of many more job losses -- job losses in the
millions by the time it's over.
A recent Business Week gathered the forecasts of several leading organizations. The
best forecasts show a total of 2.7 million jobs lost since we peaked in December 2007 -- with
the low point of employment in late spring 2009. The worst forecasts show a total of about
4 million lost jobs -- with the low point of employment at the very end of 2009 or perhaps
early 2010.
As always, economists are split on when we might see the end of the recession. But, again,
taking into account that the folks in Washington seem to be on the right track, we support
the idea that we'll start seeing a recovery -- a slow recovery -- beginning in the second
half of this year.
Regardless of who we are to believe, the reality is that this year starts the way last year
ended -- with many companies struggling to survive and others making continued cuts to
operations and workforce. As a worker, you'll need to do everything you can to show your
value to the organization -- building your brand internally as well as externally. As a
job-seeker, you'll need to push yourself harder than ever before to uncover job leads
while struggling for the patience to wait out employers who stretch out the hiring cycle.
Whether you are a worker looking to protect your job, a job-seeker struggling to find work,
or a student about to graduate, we have the advice you seek in a special section of
Quintessential Careers: Job-Hunting
During a Recession Articles for Job-Seekers and Workers.
Quintessential Resume & Cover Letter Tips Blog,
a blog from another part of the QuintCareers Network, with new resume and cover letter tips daily. A must-see for any active job-seeker.
The Career Doctor Blog,
a blog from another part of the QuintCareers Network, where each day our own Career Doctor Randall Hansen answers one career, job, college, or workplace question.
and reassurance.
The Occupational Adventure
Blog, from Curt Rosengren, a Passion Catalyst. Curt's older blog is great for finding encouraging ideas
(and resources) for moving forward with your career... a career that lights your fire. His newer blog is the
Passion Catalyst -- about loving your work.
Blue Sky Resumes Blog, from career
expert Louise Fletcher, a general career and job-search blog that covers all aspects of the job-hunt.
WorkStrong -- a
candid, completely honest discussion of the job market -- offering information and advice
about what it takes to succeed in the 21st Century world of work. From career and recruitment guru Peter Weddle.
