The Job Market: A View from The Big Game Hunter, Jeff Altman
The Big Game Hunter, Jeff Altman, and his thoughts about the employment marketplace plus news about the job market. Go to jeffaltman.com to sign up for his free job search ezines, Head Hunt Your Next Job & Natural Selection (published every other Monday). All posts are the property of The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Receive job search tips at www.getyourselfhiredNOW.com
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
The Market: June 2007
Have you noticed that job applicants are withdrawing their candidacy in the middle of your interview process?
Have you noticed some are turning down your job offers?
Has your time to hire been growing?
Are college grads playing "eenie-meenie-miney-mo" with your offers.
If you are like most firms, these are among the new conditions during this labor market. Companies are finding it more difficult to fill their jobs because we do not have enough skilled labor to fill the number of jobs being created.
Now, before you start to think that this is a commercial for the new immigration bill, it isn't. It is a commercial for increasing the H-1b quotas.
Here are some facts.
Everyone knows that unemployment is at a ten year low of 4.4-4.5 per cent. Let's look beneath those numbers for a second.
Unemployment for those without a high school diploma is over 7%.
Unemployment for those with a high school diploma is 4.5%.
Unemployment for those with a college degree or better is 1.8%.
1.8%!
Companies are now competing for scarce talent and skills that the immigration bill won't fix for them as long as the quotas on H-1b hiring is kept so low. H-1b's are not taking jobs from Americans.
Americans are stifling the economy by not increasing their numbers and forcing companies to look more at outsourcing or, ultimately, at the sale of their businesses to foreign companies for lack of scarce talent.
So how are you supposed to find increasingly scarce people?
One way is to remember that people are now a finite good and treat them as special. Sell your company to each and everyone, even if you aren't interested in them.
If you are in human resources, you need to coach your managers into the new reality of the labor market (many of them grew up or worked during the last recession when firms could offer job applicants two choices--take it or leave it).
Can you get your company's name in the press as an employer of choice by trumpeting your firm's low turnover, incredible success in its field or the success of one of its staff? This will help to draw people to your firm.
Bad impressions or confusing communications will haunt your firm for years. If you take time, just five minutes in every interview, to sell, to market your firm as a great place to work, if everyone does that, you will start to see your time to hire drop. Not instantly, but sure as shooting.
Jeff Altman, The BigGame Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.
To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s free job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, or his staffing ezine, “Natural Selection”, or to learn about his VIP program,go to www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.comTo add your firm’s career page to “The Universe” email the url to jobsearchuniverse@gmail.com.
If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at thebiggamehunter@cisny.com(If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).
If you have a question that you would like me to answer pertaining to job hunting or hiring, email it to him at: thebiggamehunter@gmail.com
(Akron/Tire Review) Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. is continuing with its plans to convert its Texarkana, Ark., tire plant to a so-called “flex plant,” and will lay off some 150 workers there this weekend.
The layoffs are part of the 400 to 500 workers Cooper planned to put on furlough at the plant.According to local media reports, some of the newly laid off workers may be called back sooner as Cooper sales have increased. In addition, the reports said, the number of workers furloughed is fewer than previously estimated.
By Jane M. Von Bergen INQUIRER STAFF WRITER It's a dubious record - Pennsylvania became the state with the third-highest number of unemployment claims due to mass layoffs in April, the U.S. Labor Department said. Mass layoffs are those involving 50 or more workers.
In fairness, Pennsylvania is often among the top five states in the number of people involved in mass layoffs, simply because it is among the nation's most populous states.
In April, Federal-Mogul Corp., an automotive supplier, said it would lay off 79 people when it closes its Chester plant in June. Broder Bros., a Philadelphia bakery, will layoff 121 people in July. Southco Inc., an engineering and manufacturing company, will layoff 278 next month when it closes its Concordville facility in DelawareCounty.
Under federal law, employers must inform states if they intend to lay off more than 50 people. Pennsylvania had 10,997 initial claims for unemployment due to mass layoffs. Other top states were California, New York, and Ohio and New Jersey. New Jersey had 4,749 initial claims for unemployment due to mass layoffs. Together the top five states accounted for about half of all the mass layoffs and half of all initial claims for unemployment benefits due to the mass layoffs.
Manufacturing accounted for 31% of mass layoffs in April
Manufacturing accounted for 31% of mass layoffs in April
Author: RP news wires In April, employers took 1,243 mass layoff actions, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on May 23. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment; the number of workers involved totaled 126,047, on a seasonally adjusted basis. The number of mass layoff events decreased by 33 from the prior month, and the number of associated initial claims fell by 4,640.
During April, 383 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 43,753 initial claims. Compared with March, mass layoff activity in manufacturing decreased by 37 events and by 10,688 initial claims.
The national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent in April, essentially unchanged from 4.4 percent the prior month and down from 4.7 percent a year earlier. Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 88,000 over the month and by 1.9 million over the year.
Industry Distribution (Not Seasonally Adjusted)The 10 industries reporting the highest numbers of mass layoff initial claims, not seasonally adjusted, accounted for 42 percent of the total initial claims in April. The industry with the highest number of initial claims was school and employee bus transportation with 17,135, followed by motion picture and video production with 7,647, and temporary help services with 7,330. Together, these three industries accounted for 25 percent of all initial claims due to mass layoffs during the month.
The manufacturing sector accounted for 25 percent of all mass layoff events and 28 percent of all related initial claims filed in April; a year earlier, manufacturing made up 26 percent of events and 33 percent of initial claims. In April 2007, the number of manufacturing claimants was highest in transportation equipment manufacturing (11,466, largely heavy-duty truck manufacturing), followed by food manufacturing (5,925) and machinery manufacturing (2,392).
Transportation and warehousing accounted for 13 percent of mass layoff events and 15 percent of initial claims in April, primarily from school and employee bus transportation. Administrative and waste services comprised 12 percent of events and 9 percent of initial claims filed during the month, with the majority of layoffs in temporary help services. Three percent of all mass layoff events and 7 percent of related initial claims filed were from information, primarily from motion picture and video production. Accommodation and food services made up 6 percent of events and initial claims, largely from the food service contractors industry.
On a not seasonally adjusted basis, the number of mass layoff events in April, at 1,224, was up by 84 from a year earlier, and the number of associated initial claims increased by 5,685 to 127,274.
The largest over-the-year increases in initial claims were reported in motion picture and sound recording industries (+4,620), credit intermediation and related activities (+2,543), and hospitals (+1,360). The largest over-the-year decreases in mass layoff initial claims were reported in transportation equipment manufacturing (-2,693) and food manufacturing (-2,267).
Geographic Distribution (Not Seasonally Adjusted)Among the four census regions, the highest number of initial claims in April due to mass layoffs was in the West with 42,381. Motion picture and sound recording, administrative and support services, and agriculture and forestry support activities together accounted for 42 percent of all mass layoff initial claims in that region during the month. The Northeast had the second-largest number of initial claims among the regions with 35,637, followed by the South with 26,211, and the Midwest with 23,045.
The number of initial claimants in mass layoffs increased over the year in three of the four regions – the West (+8,184), the South (+7,928) and the Northeast (+1,022). The Midwest region experienced the only decrease (-11,449), primarily due to fewer initial claimants in transportation equipment manufacturing. Six of the nine geographic divisions had over-the-year increases in the numbers of initial claims associated with mass layoffs, with the largest increases in the Pacific (+5,929), the South Atlantic (+3,035) and the East South Central (+2,705). The division with the largest over-the-year decrease in mass layoff initial claims was the East North Central (-10,144).
Among the states, California recorded the highest number of initial claims filed due to mass layoff events in April (28,883), followed by New York (15,254), Pennsylvania (10,997), Ohio (6,024) and New Jersey (4,749). These five states accounted for 53 percent of all mass layoff events and 52 percent of all initial claims for unemployment insurance.
California had the largest over-the-year increase in the number of initial claims (+4,332). States having the next largest increases in initial claims were Pennsylvania (+2,295), South Carolina (+1,977), Arizona (+1,947) and New York (+1,868). The largest over-the-year decreases in claims occurred in Ohio (-6,158) and Michigan (-3,402).
About 360 workers at Investors Financial Services received bad, if not expected news
Monday as the back office firm started its first wave of layoffs stemming from the merger of the firm into State Street. The Boston Herald reported the layoff Tuesday morning. Not all of the cuts came from Investors Financial Services as State Street officials told 90 of their employees that they will lose the jobs as a part of the combination.
Together, the cuts involved some 450 employees. The two Boston-based firms have a combined 13,200 employees. The paper reported that some jobs were eliminated immediately, while others will be kept on through September.
RALEIGH, N.C. North Carolina's unemployment rate rose for the first time in seven months in April, jumping to 4.8 percent, according to data released Friday by the state Employment Security Commission.
The rise from 4.5 percent in March marked the largest increase in unemployment since April 2003.The state's employment dropped by 6,355 to 4,312,899 - the second consecutive monthly decline.
Compared to one year ago, employment was still up by 75,781, or 1.79 percent.
Analytical models are trying to understand some of the discrepancies in the official employment data. It seems the job growth has been knowingly or unknowingly overstated. Take the example of the homebuilders. Housing starts are down close to 39% from the peak last year. But residential construction unemployment is up by only 5%. That does not maker sense. In that industry, no one is paid to sit on the sideline.
Some argue, the builders used illegal aliens to do the work. Now these illegal aliens are laid off. They never really showed up on the statistics. That fact is that the numbers do not match up.
Same kind of statistics points to discrepancy in financial services industry. The financial services sector is down 15% from the peak last year due to real estate related problems. But the unemployment in financial services sector have hardly budged.
It is possible that underemployment in the economy has created a massive flaw in the way job growth is calculated. For example, the unemployment rate is low because many of those lost their jobs started their own business because of lack of comparable opportunities.
There is plenty of hamburger flipping jobs but there is a lack of professional well paying jobs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics issued their monthly regional employment release Friday, showing economic data for all states for April 2007. In Michigan, the state lost 4,600 jobs while the unemployment rate spiked from 6.5% to 7.1%, once again making it the highest in the nation.
LANSING- The Bureau of Labor Statistics issued their monthly regional employment release Friday, showing economic data for all states for April 2007. In Michigan, the state lost 4,600 jobs while the unemployment rate spiked from 6.5% to 7.1%, once again making it the highest in the nation. "Today's reminder of where Michigan's economy is should not come as a surprise to anybody," said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saulius "Saul" Anuzis. "Even with clear indicators showing that Michigan businesses are suffering more than in any other state,
Governor Granholm and Democrats in the state House continue their crusade to raise taxes on businesses and consumers. The data released today, along with releases in previous months, clearly show that this is the wrong path for Michigan." The increase in the unemployment rate is the largest one-month increase since July of 1998. The data also showed that states with right-to-work legislation pre-dominantly had the lowest unemployment rates.
Author: RP news wires Alaska lost 1.7 percent of its manufacturing employment over the past 12 months, according to the 2007 Alaska Manufacturers Directory, an industrial guide published annually by Manufacturers’ News Inc. MNI reports Alaska lost 539 industrial jobs and 39 plants since March 2006, the first net loss the state has seen in several years.
“The fact that much of Alaska’s industry stems from its vast natural resources makes it less vulnerable to the outsourcing many other states have seen,” said Tom Dubin, President of the Chicago area-based publisher, which has been surveying U.S. industry since 1912. “It is not immune, however, from the mergers, consolidations and automation that has displaced many manufacturing jobs.”
The fishing and oil industries remain Alaska’s top industrial employers, accounting for more than half of the state’s industrial employment. Fish packing/preparation accounts for 9,340 jobs, or 31 percent, of the state’s manufacturing employment, down 813 jobs, or 8 percent, from last year. Forty-three percent of these jobs are located in the Aleutian Islands. Oil and gas field machinery/repair and petroleum refining/drilling represent a combined 32 percent of the state’s manufacturing employment, or 9,981 jobs, with no significant change reported over the past 12 months.
Manufacturers’ News reports Alaska is now home to 972 manufacturers employing 30,397 workers. MNI profiles both large and small Alaska manufacturers, including start-up companies with just a few employees. Eighty-six percent of the state’s manufacturers employ 15 or fewer employees, compared to the U.S. average of 62 percent, according to Manufacturers’ News.
MNI’s regional study shows Alaska ranks 49th in the nation for manufacturing plants and jobs. Alaska ranks last in the Western United States for number of manufacturers, but second-to-last for related jobs, just behind Hawaii. South Central Alaska accounts for the most manufacturing activity with Anchorage, Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula representing 17,795, or 58 percent, of the state’s jobs and 534, or 55 percent, of its plants. MNI reports this region lost 3.6 percent of its manufacturing employment over the past 12 months and lost 4.8 percent of its plants.
MNI data shows the Aleutian Islands are home to 11 manufacturers employing 3,996, or 13 percent, of the state’s manufacturing jobs. The oil-rich North Slope region accounts for the most manufacturing jobs in Northern Alaska with 15 companies employing 1,018 workers, 79 percent of which are employed by the oil industry.
MNI’s city data shows Anchorage is the state’s top industrial employer, representing 43.2 percent of the state’s manufacturing employment, or 14,065 jobs, down a half percent from March 2006. Dutch Harbor ranks second in the state with 1,830 jobs with no significant change in employment from last year while Fairbanks ranks third with 1,699 workers, down 1.1 percent in 2006. Kodiak ranks fourth with 1,382 jobs, while fifth-ranked Kenai accounts for 977.
Comment Those of you afraid of Robert Cringely's claim that IBM will layoff 150,000 workers might want to read his latest column. The PBS scribe has blown it again.
At the bottom of a piece on Google, Cringely returns to the IBM layoff topic and makes the following statement: "Last week IBM also posted more than 15,000 new positions on Yahoo HotJobs. If these jobs are real and IBM foresees stable employment numbers, won't 15,000 existing IBM employees have to leave?"
You might wonder how IBM hiring 15,000 workers, while also laying off 15,000 as Cringely suggests, would really back up the claims about a severely reduced US workforce. As we see it, that would leave IBM with the same number of staff in the US.
Don't spend too much time pondering that idea though because the 15,000 jobs don't really exist anyway.
It seems that Cringely simply typed "IBM" into the Yahoo! HotJobs keyword search bar. Try it yourself, and you'll find that, yes, 15,081 jobs are up for grabs. Of course, a huge chunk of those jobs aren't really tied to IBM corporate at all. For example, Spherion wants an IBM storage expert and Cisco wants an IBM project intern. Cringely might have got a more accurate account by sorting the results by company and focusing on IBM. Do that, and you find 12,859 jobs at Big Blue. We'll grant you that's still quite the total.
But, according to spokesman Fred McNeese, IBM typically has only 3,000 job postings up at any given time. Many of the jobs on Yahoo!'s board are repeat offers for the same position just in different cities. Search for "Software IT Architect", for example, and you find 22 listings for the position in towns such as Los Angeles, Houston and New York. When all is said and one, IBM is looking for close to 3,000 staff via Yahoo! - just like it always does.
Cringely also attaches a time element to his claim, stating that the jobs appeared "last week." Er, again, that's not true. The job posting dates on the HotJobs site change from day-to-day. For example, almost all of the IBM jobs appear today to have been posted today. We're sure the same thing held true when Cringely checked the site last week. IBM clearly doesn't want people to ignore the openings because of an old posting date, so Yahoo! tweaks the postings every day. One mistake as part of Cringely's fear-mongering campaign would be fine, but that's not what we're dealing with.
Cringely's original story on the IBM layoffs claimed that 150,000 US workers would be fired. Thing is, IBM only employs 130,000 people in the US. Cringely also claimed that all the layoffs were taking place under a project code-named LEAN. Those familiar with Six Sigma will know that Lean is simply the term associated with cutting waste out of business practices and not some nefarious culling program developed by IBM.
Cringely has done so much for technology over the years, so it's a huge shame to see his reporting reach such lows on this IBM matter. If IBM is really about to layoff a huge chunk of its US workforce, IBMers and the rest of us deserve to know about it. Layoffs on the scale posited by Cringely would devastate the US economy in the near-term. But we'll never get close to the truth with people like Cringely making such wild accusations without bothering to do one bit of research about the topic at hand.
Many of you have attacked The Register for not recognizing Cringely's brilliance on this topic. And, perhaps, this story comes from a defensive posture.
The evidence, however, seems to suggest that Cringely writes whatever he feels like without ever bothering to check the basics. Shouldn't PBS strive for higher standards? ®
By PATRICK McGEEHAN Published: May 25, 2007 New York City’s economy has been booming, with unemployment dropping to historic lows and Wall Street getting most of the credit. But the typical new worker in the city is not a pinstriped investment banker or a corporate lawyer. She is a home health aide like Vivienne P. Smith.
Ms. Smith, a recent immigrant from Jamaica, cooks for and dresses elderly patients in their Brooklyn homes. Though she is a member of a large labor union, she earns just $7.50 an hour and receives no health insurance or other benefits.
In many ways, home-care aides are the garment workers of the modern New York economy. The working conditions may be better, but the low pay, skimpy benefits and weak prospects for upward mobility tend to draw mostly immigrant women with few marketable skills. Jobs like Ms. Smith’s, poor-paying positions in health care and social services, have accounted for most of the growth in employment in the city in the last 15 years. Indeed, without the rapid health care growth, the number of jobs in the city would have declined since 1990, according to figures compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The health care and social assistance sector, which includes not only hospitals, nursing homes and doctor’s offices, but also day care centers and food banks, accounts for a growing share of jobs across the country — about 13 percent of all American jobs in 2005. But that is still a far smaller share than in some parts of New York City. In Brooklyn and the Bronx, the sector now supplies about one-third of all private-sector jobs and wages, more than double the contribution of any other industry, the bureau’s data show.
“In terms of wages, the driving force in the New York City economy has been Wall Street,” said Michael Dolfman, the regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “But in terms of employment, the driving force in the city economy has been the health care and social assistance sector.”
The number of jobs in financial services has shrunk in the last 15 years, even as average pay has soared in that industry.
The relative growth of health care employment in New York and other big American cities is a result of the decline of manufacturing and the aging of the population, said Mark V. Pauly, a health-care economist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. At the same time, personal preferences and financial considerations have fostered a shift toward caring for the frail and elderly at home instead of in institutions, Mr. Pauly said.
Many of the patients of the home-care aides now working in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are retired from the factories that formed the streetscapes of those boroughs half a century ago. With many of those shuttered plants having been transformed into high-priced housing, health services are playing larger roles in the local economy.
That growing dependence on a single sector worries some economists, particularly because its fortunes are largely tied to government programs like Medicare.
“I look at that and I think it’s expanding a sweatshop form of work with very low wages, very few benefits,” said James Parrott, chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization financed in part by unions, referring to the rising employment in home care. For most of those jobs, wages are low and rising slowly. In Brooklyn’s growing health-care sector, home-care employment more than quadrupled to 12,160 jobs between 1990 and 2005, the last full year for which data was available. On average, those jobs pay $27,413 a year.
Ms. Smith, 55, said she would not be able to survive on her meager pay if she were not living with relatives. She started out working full weeks and even some overtime. But lately, her employer, Partners in Care, a subsidiary of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, has assigned her just one four-hour shift per day, she said. That amounts to just $30 a day, before taxes and the cost of her two-bus commute across Brooklyn.
“Sometimes, my pay just goes to buying something to eat and paying my fare,” said Ms. Smith, who added that she was no better off financially than when she was working in factories in Jamaica. “When you’re small and you’re talking about going abroad, the thought of it gets you excited. Then, when you come and see for yourself, you say, ‘Oh dear, it’s just the same.’ ”
Kevin Finnegan, a lawyer for the home-care division of 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, the health care workers’ union, said home health aides were paid less in New York City than in most other parts of the country.
“I believe that is a direct result of this huge immigrant population that is willing to work for lower wages,” he said. “For the same reason, the garment industry was here.”
Mr. Finnegan, who helped the union organize the home-care aides working for Partners in Care, said that in some places upstate, home-care aides had been able to demand as much as $12 an hour. “You leave New York City and the rates go up,” he said.
But Mr. Finnegan said some relief was on the way for many of the 43,000 home-care workers who are represented by the union. The contract with Partners in Care calls for raises to as much as $10 an hour this year, he said.
Karlyne A. Mills is dubious. A veteran home-care aide who immigrated from Haiti, Ms. Mills, who has worked at the job for 13 years, is still earning $8.30 an hour almost a year after she was supposed to get a raise to $9, she said. She receives about $300 before taxes for working three 12-hour shifts a week caring for a Brooklyn woman who needs to be bathed, fed and lifted in and out of her wheelchair.
“It’s getting a little frustrating waiting because we’re working hard,” said Ms. Mills, who lives in her mother’s home in East New York. “From the time that I became a home health aide, I always wondered why this job is so important and why our pay is so low.”
But Ms. Mills, 43, said she stayed with the work because she enjoyed helping people. For the first six years, she earned just $6 an hour, she said. For most of her career, she has gone without health insurance coverage for her daughter, now a sophomore in college, or her son, a high school senior, she said.
Having to take her children to a hospital as charity cases whenever they needed to see a doctor was “very horrible,” Ms. Mills said. She would like a job that provides health insurance for her whole family, but at the moment, she said, she would settle for that raise to $10 an hour.
Jay Conolly, director of human resources for Partners in Care, said the pay raises hinged on the release by the State Legislature of an additional $100 million in funding that was recently approved. Mr. Conolly said his company wanted to keep its workers happy because “we are in a growth mode, and the demand for home care has never been stronger.”
That growth should continue for years, said Mr. Pauly of the Wharton School, unless the government sharply curtails spending on health care.
“People who want to get control of health care spending should be careful what they wish for,” Mr. Pauly said. “Spending less on health care would actually be harmful to the local economy because it’s a good source of jobs.”
Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 18, 2007; Page D01
Silver Spring's Discovery Communications will close its remaining 103 retail stores later this year, including eight in this region, a move that will cut 1,000 jobs -- 25 percent of the company's workforce.
Since David Zaslav became its chief executive in January, the privately owned global cable network has been trying to shed non-performing sectors and bolster those that have the most potential for revenue growth, such as Internet video and high-definition television programming.
The company recently bought out one of its few owners, Cox Communications, to simplify its ownership structure with the goal of becoming a publicly traded company in the near future. Yesterday's announcement that the company is shearing off its high-cost retail stores likely will make Discovery more attractive to public investors.
All mall-based and stand-alone Discovery Channel stores are targeted for closing by late summer or early fall. Seven Discovery stores in airports licensed and operated by the Hudson Group, which owns news stands, will remain in business. The job cuts involve both full- and part-time workers; some of those workers may be offered jobs elsewhere in the company, Zaslav said yesterday. The workers are not represented by a union.
Discovery started in the 1990s with 15 stores of its own and bought 117 Nature Company stores in 1996. At the time, -- before the broad acceptance of online commerce, mall stores were a preferred way to sell branded merchandise.
The number of Discovery stores peaked at 170 nationwide and in Puerto Rico in the early 2000s, just as e-commerce began to be cost-effective. The company has been closing selected stores, while opening new ones, ever since.
The company, which has more than 100 television networks worldwide, including the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC, laid off 200 employees in April and hinted then it would shutter its retail stores, shifting its merchandising efforts to online sales and partnerships with established retailers.
"We [can] be bigger and in more places and stronger if we don't have these brick-and-mortar mall stores we're carrying around on our backs," said Zaslav, who was the cable chief of NBC Universal before joining Discovery.
For instance, Zaslav said Discovery has a deal to supply 550 Toys R Us stores with merchandise related to Discovery's Animal Planet channel.
"We realized we could reach millions of people without having to build out an independent chain of stores, have a staff, pay for the lights and air conditioning" and absorb other costs associated with maintaining stores, Zaslav said. As a unit within Discovery, the stores booked about $130 million in revenue last year but had a net loss of about $30 million, according to a Discovery executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because the figures are not publicly reported. The savings from closing the stores could run as much as $75 million per year, the company estimates.
Discovery examined the possibility of selling the stores, but found little meaningful interest from potential buyers, another Discovery executive said.
Online sales of Discovery merchandise are up 144 percent in 2007, compared with the same period last year, the company said, partly on the strength of DVD sales of Discovery's hit, "Planet Earth." The company does not break out store sales vs. online sales.
In addition to DVDs of Discovery programming, the learning-themed stores sell toys, such as a radio-controlled hammerhead shark suitable for alarming pool-goers, telescopes and exercise equipment. Such items will continue to be available at Discovery's online store.
In the first quarter of this year, Discovery's revenue increased 10 percent, to $728 million, compared with the same period of 2006. The company's first-quarter operating cash flow was up 24 percent, to $180 million, compared with 2006.
Discovery has retail stores in several area locations, including the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Harborplace in Baltimore and Union Station in Washington. The company had a sizable store at Verizon Center when it opened in 1997 as MCI Center, but the store performed poorly, owing to low pedestrian traffic in the area, and closed in 2001, just before the Chinatown development started to heat up.
Zaslav said he has visited a number of the Discovery stores since he has been on the job and called the employees "a great group of people."
"They are enormously talented and those that want to stay in the brick-and-mortar space for their careers, I'm convinced their experience at Discovery will serve them well," he said.
Traffic was brisk at the Discovery story in Union Station yesterday afternoon, where staffers declined to speak to the media. Customers Jack and Bonnie Myers, visiting from New York, said they were surprised and a little saddened by the chain's closing, saying Discovery is a rare store that sells videos and toys designed to make kids smarter.
Told that the store's items would still be for sale online, both said they were unlikely to shop that way.
"We're out in the country," Bonnie Myers said. "We have dial-up. It's too slow."
Jack Myers said the stores provide something online shopping cannot.
"You lose something when you can't touch a product," he said.
Saturday, May 12, 2007 By Chris KnapeThe Grand Rapids Press
WALKER -- Up to 110 people could be laid off beginning next week at Lear Corp.'s plant at 2915 Walkent Drive NW next week, workers at the plant said.
What's not clear is how long those layoffs could last.
The plant has about 500 employees making seating components.
"I don't know if this layoff is indefinite or permanent," said former United Auto Workers Local 2344 President Mike Baker.
"In the past seven years I've worked there, I haven't seen Lear not bring them back." The company declined comment, a spokesman said.
The company did comment about the plant in September, however, when a spokeswoman talked about receiving a tax break from Walker based on investments in new equipment that were to add 36 jobs.
The status of those jobs is uncertain. UAW workers are laid off based on seniority. Neither the state nor the city has received notification of an impending layoff.
Walker City Manager Cathy Vander Meulen would have to review the city's abatement agreement with Lear to see if layoffs might affect the plant's tax breaks.
"We have to look, if they are laying people off, at what the employment levels will be," she said. Erich Merkle, an analyst with IRN Inc. of Grand Rapids, said Lear faces issues related to its reliance on the traditional Big Three and its still relatively high labor costs.
Although Lear is profitable, it has been restructuring to remain so. The company is being purchased for $2.8 billion by American Real Estate Partners LP.
"The position that Lear is in today is that they've got too much capacity," Merkle said. "When you start taking a look at the automakers and the dropoff in production and the cut that automakers are making with their capacity ... that also has to happen in the supply base."
Plants such as those in Walker are a challenge for any auto parts supplier.
The plant remained Lear's only plant in West Michigan after the Southfield-based auto supplier spun off its interiors business this month. Lear sold its 26 North American interiors plants to International Automotive Components Group North America Inc.; the interiors business has annual sales of $2.5 billion.
"It's going to be very difficult to keep any of those plants open like the one in Walker. You have to reduce your overhead cost structure because the revenue isn't there," Merkle said.
create_top_n_box_tabs('Channel Register', ''); select_unread_popular_stories(); The Latest Jobs Project Manager - Utilities / Consultancy (£40k + bens (neg DOE), Buckinghamshire) Read More Software Developer OOD .NET C# (£45, 000, Liphook, Hampshire) Read More Software Developer (£30k - £40k pa + BENEFITS, London) Read More Senior Java Developer (£42k - £47k pa, Camberley, Croydon, Guildford, Kingston upon Thames, Richmon... Read More America is under siege. Do we blame IBM or Cringely? By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View → More by this author 11 May 2007 21:31 150,000 staff fired. -20,000 left ... Analysis America faces a very serious question. Is Robert Cringely right?
Last week, Cringely presented the idea that IBM will layoff 150,000 workers, hoping to reduce costs. Cringely's reputation for making the boldest of claims seems to have reduced the impact of his piece. A few technology trade publications mentioned the IBM crisis speculation. The mainstream press ignored Cringely altogether.
If Cringely is correct, then the Wall Street Journal and New York Times had better find some reporters with investigative instincts and start digging into this situation. IBM firing 150,000 US workers would devastate the current, rather optimistic business climate. Worse than that it would leave IBM without a single worker in the US. Perhaps CEO Sam Palmisano has already purchased an estate in Shanghai.
Yes, Cringely overshot with the 150,000 figure by quite a margin. I should have picked up on this but failed to do so. Thankfully, our readers and his bailed out the fourth estate.
At last check, IBM employed close to 130,000 people in the US and well over 350,000 staff worldwide. In a fresh column this week, Cringely, reporting for PBS, addressed these numbers.
"Maybe the number WAS too high," Cringely writes. "Instead of 150,000, maybe the true number is only 100,000 or 75,000 or even 50,000. Would 50,000 layoffs from IBM Global Services be significantly less catastrophic for the workforce than 150,000?
"And while the number of layoffs to come may indeed be less than 150,000, I'd prefer to stick with that larger number, which I feel is not far off. . ."
Cringely's casual approach to these layoff claims strikes me as appalling. I love a controversial, hard-hitting story as much as the next reporter. You cannot, however, mess around with this type of issue and just "prefer" to pick and choose layoff numbers. Reporters, even columnists, need concrete information in these instances. After all, Cringely has targeted nothing less than a technology sector meltdown with his pieces - a meltdown that would reverberate well beyond IBM's boundaries, probably into your home.
Much of Cringely's criticism for IBM centers around a program dubbed "LEAN." The reporter makes it sound like he met with IBMers in a dark alley to obtain this acronym, which portends great change at Big Blue.
As best as I can tell, Lean stands as a common tactic for companies that have embraced the Six Sigma methods for improving process within an organization. You can see for yourself just how common the Lean idea is.
The Lean concept focuses on eliminating waste and redundancy in an organization. If IBM considers the majority of its US workforce waste, we're in real trouble.
In a letter to employees, IBM, of course, argued quite the opposite angle. The company tried to explain a recent 1,300 person layoff and to counter Cringely's original column.
The letter, obtained by Cringely, reads in part:
We said when we released 1Q results we would be putting in place a series of actions to address cost issues in our U.S. strategic outsourcing business. We have undertaken efforts toward that, and recently implemented a focused resource reduction in the U.S. While any such reduction is difficult for those employees affected, these actions are well within the scope of our ongoing workforce rebalancing efforts.
The blog also completely misinterpreted our efforts around Lean. To fully understand Lean, you have to view it in a strategic context - a key part of what we're doing to reinvent service delivery to provide more value to clients and make IBM more competitive. We are using Lean, which is a commonly used methodology to conduct process design and development, to make informed decisions about how to improve and streamline processes. We are going about that in a disciplined and rigorous way, and the intent, as it has always been, is to improve our speed, quality and responsiveness to clients.
IBM faces three major near-term issues - all of which revolve around its services business.
Hard Services.
Big Blue committed whole hog to the services game well before its major hardware rivals HP, Dell, Sun Microsystems, and EMC. That proved a pretty smart strategy with IBM able to gobble up lots of easy cash.
The rivals, lacking competitive muscle, mocked IBM's services play. Sun's then CEO Scott McNealy took the criticism lead, saying things such as "IBM Global Services doesn't want to solve the problem with the car, they want to customize the jalopy. They have to find a way to keep the hundreds of thousands, the hordes dutifully working and completely billable." As the chart above shows, IBM now faces plenty of services competition from its main rivals. This has made the services market painfully competitive, leaving IBM with tons of services revenue but thin margins. To illustrate this point, I turn to another slide (below) - this time from IBM's own services researcher Paul Maglio.
Maglio spends most of his time these days trying to create more efficient relationships between IBM and its customers on the services front. He argues that the US will be driven by a services economy in the years to come and that vendors along with the government need to invest money into proper services studies.
Such a response from IBM seems only natural given the fresh competitive pressure it faces and the falling services margins. These factors only compound IBM's third problem, which is that its financial results over the past few years are made to look much better than they really are, thanks to a weak dollar.
Is the Services Biz doing its part?
The IBM I'm experiencing does not seem like a company ready to collapse its US workforce. Rather, it seems like a company making gradual cuts to deal with a changing business while at the same time researching ways to pursue services in a more sophisticated fashion. No major vendor can afford the reputation of being a cash cancer on its clients. IBM seems to know this and appears to be trying to fix its past ways.
Cringely argues that IBM's public face is all show. He urges readers to delve into the 1,000+ comments left in response to his first story as proof of IBM's woes.
The problem with most of these comments is that they start by accepting Cringely's premise as true. Such is the nature of message boards.
I also take issue with Cringely's notion that the comments prove all that helpful. You'll find readers leaving poems by Shelley and providing worthless statements such as "Bob, I imagine you emailed a copy of this article to Lou Dobbs" and "Let it(IBM)crash & burn FOREVER!" True enough, some of the reader comments are fantastic. I enjoyed the same experience with messages left on our original Cringely story and via emails. In fact, a couple of my most respected emailers backed up Cringely's arguments, making me think the columnist is on the right track here.
I'm going to quote one reader, who shall remain anonymous, at length because this is a crucial issue. I have edited the e-mail as I saw fit.
First, this has been kept extremely quiet until now. (I'd heard rumblings about this a year ago, but thought it was more "localized" to specific accounts in the outsource services area - didn't connect the dots.) IBM services is having some problems with accounts that were acquired by IBM as outsource contracts, mainly due to the competency of the acquired team - both management and worker-bees. No surprise here: that was why the customers outsourced the services to IBM in the first place - the customer couldn't manage their own infrastructure. IBM had intended to do some serious load-shedding on these accounts anyway, but the scope is really much larger than I expected.
Which brings us to part two: there is a serious problem with work ethic in the technology sector. This also covers both sides of the management line, with incompetent managers being just as prevalent as incompetent workers. IBM services has had what is probably a similar exposure as other companies to the problems this causes; however, unlike most other companies, IBM is choosing to do something proactive about it.
What do I mean by that last remark? IBM is not just reacting to the incompetence of the acquired worker-bees the way most companies do: IBM appears to be doing one of their every-decade-or-so house-cleanings at all levels. This is going to cut deeply into their middle management ranks, their technical leadership ranks, even into some senior-level positions (although these will probably be couched as "early retirement" or "personal pursuits").
IBM has established a tradition of leadership for over 100 years in all its fields. It has done this by aggressively pruning its workforce time and time again and establishing super-human standards for its workers. In the past this was typified by the IBM philosophy that you live "a Company life" - wearing dark suits and white shirts, taking transfers and relocation regardless of the impact to your personal life, and being forced to work in every area of the company on your way up the management ladder. Failure was NOT an option: you failed at an assignment, you were working elsewhere in two weeks.
Over the past decade, IBM has transitioned from "Big Iron" to the Internet economy with solid success - something that none of its contemporaries (if they even exist) can boast. In the process, IBM expanded aggressively into many "new" technology and services areas - mainly by hiring and buying from the outside. No rocket-science here: that's how everyone does it. IBM is NOW doing what the other companies (SUN, HP, Microsoft, etc.) are NOT doing: it has identified what is working and what is not, and is now purging the failures - especially the human failures, the workers that are not contributing to IBM's growth.
Foreign out-sourcing is not a panacea; however, many foreign workers - especially Chinese and Eastern European - have a very different work ethic than their American or European counterparts. They WILL work harder, study harder, spend more time working and less whining about their company. Their leaders - technical and non-technical - are much more serious about their work and less concerned about becoming dot-com millionaires than their counterparts. So, IBM is choosing to keep a core of motivated workers and replace the rest with new workers without the baggage of a whining Euro-American society. The fact that the new workers are cheaper is a side benefit - IBM has always understood the difference between cost and value - and they will be judged on the value they provide, not simply the cost they save. If all of you wrote me emails like that, I'd be a genius.
As a Silicon Valley historian and a technology reporter, I have tremendous respect for Cringely. He knows his stuff.
Cringely, however, seems to have confused IBM adjusting its business model to vibrant, competitive threats with some kind of anti-American assault. And, rather than approaching this subject, with the careful touch it deserves, he's relied on fear-mongering and rampant speculation.
It may just be the case that Cringely has a deeper, more insightful agenda at play with his recent pair of flippant stories. Perhaps the American technology worker needs a wakeup call. The rising stock market has us all feeling pretty good again. Sure, China and India have all those engineers, cheap labor and relentlessness work ethics. But we're ideas people and will always be profiting from the cutting edge, while shipping the grunt work overseas.
Well, if the US is truly to rely on its status as a "knowledge economy" and an "information services economy" in the years ahead, we'd better get a lot better at figuring out which services matter and how to accomplish the whole services "engagement" in a way that leaves customers feeling decent about the experience.
The United States nearly doubled the number of new high-technology jobs in 2006, marking the second year of job growth in the tech sector, but New Hampshire’s tech industry noted only modest growth, according to a recent study.
In “Cyberstates 2007: A Complete State-by-State Overview of the U.S. High-Technology Industry,” compiled by the technology trade group the American Electronics Association, the nation added 150,000 jobs in 2006, for a total of 5.8 million high-tech workers, up from the 87,400 tech jobs added in 2005.New Hampshire employed 37,500 high-tech workers, placing it 34th in the country. California was named the No. 1 “cyberstate,” employing 919,322 high-tech workers, and Wyoming ranked last, with 4,596 workers.
“This is the second year in a row that tech industry employment has added jobs,” said William T. Archey, president and CEO of AeA. “Not only do these jobs make critical contributions to the U.S. economy, but they also pay extremely well. The average tech industry wage is 86 percent more than the average U.S. private sector wage. In fact, in 48 cyberstates the average high-tech wage is at least 50 percent more than the average private sector wage, and in 10 cyberstates this differential is over 90 percent.”
AeA uses statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine its high-technology sector trends. National data on high-tech employment and venture capital investments are for 2006. The individual states’ employment data are for 2005, the most recent year available at time of publication, as are the data for wages, payroll and businesses establishments.
Nationally, the average tech wage in 2005 was $75,500, 85 percent above the average private sector wage of $40,500. Venture capital investments were up in 2006 by 2 percent, or $285 million, totaling $12.7 billion.
Much of New Hampshire’s performance in the tech sector was average to below average for 2005, according to the study.
The Granite State added just 29 new jobs — a change of only 0.08 percent from 2004. Total high-tech payroll ($2.7 billion in 2005), research and development expenditures ($1.7 billion in 2004) and venture capital investments ($65.7 million in 2006) all ranked New Hampshire in the lower end of average for the country.
While New Hampshire’s total venture capital dollars placed it at 25th in the country, the change in actual dollars decreased by $45.8 million. That negative change also represented a 41 percent drop in investments, putting New Hampshire in 37th place for VC investment percent change.
New Hampshire was among the leaders in the country, however, in several other key areas:• The Granite State’s high-tech firms employed 70 out of every 1,000 private sector workers in 2005 — ninth in the nation.•
Those in New Hampshire’s high-tech fields were also paid quite well, with an average wage of $73,300, or 79 percent more than the average private sector wage (14th ranked).• New Hampshire’s notable low unemployment — 3.4 percent in 2006 — was ranked positively at 10th lowest in the nation, tying with Idaho.
Other New England states New Hampshire’s reputation as a manufacturing powerhouse also was highlighted in the report in several specialized manufacturing sectors. It ranked fifth in photonics manufacturing employment, at 1,200 jobs; 10th in measuring and control instrument manufacturing employment, at 7,900 jobs; and 12th in electronic components manufacturing employment with 5,900 jobs.
Massachusetts led the six-state New England region for overall high-technology indicators as the sixth-highest cyberstate in the nation. Connecticut was second in the region and 24th nationally.
Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont were ranked 42nd, 44th and 45th in the nation, respectively.
Massachusetts ranked second nationally for average high-tech wages of $89,659. Connecticut placed 11th with average high-tech earnings at $73,312. Rhode Island and Vermont placed 22nd and 26th respectively. Maine was ranked 41st for tech wages.
The Bay State also was ranked second nationally for the number of high-tech workers per 1,000 private sector employees (86.15) in 2005. Vermont ranked 13th (59.29). Rankings for the other New England states were: Connecticut (22nd, 46.91), Rhode Island (23rd, 45.60) and Maine (39th, 31.75).
While Massachusetts remained strong in the nation and the region in terms of total VC dollars — ranking second at $2.8 billion in 2006 as well as second in the number change in investments at $321 million between 2005 and 2006 — its position dropped to 20th for its 13 percent change in VC dollars from 2005 to 2006.Connecticut and Rhode Island ranked 17th and 21st, respectively, for VC investments. Vermont and Maine were among the lowest states for VC capital, at 40th and 42nd, respectively.
“Year after year, we have illustrated how critical the high-tech industry is to the nation and to each and every state as it generates economic growth, innovation and high-paying jobs wherever it develops,” said Archey. “While we are encouraged by the pickup in tech employment … we have some serious challenges ahead. Companies of all sizes continue to have problems recruiting highly qualified and educated individuals to work for them, whether those individuals are foreign or domestic.”
Government reports unexpected drop of 9,000 in latest week
WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell unexpectedly by 9,000 to the lowest level of claims since mid-January, a Labor Department report showed on Thursday.
Initial filings for state unemployment insurance claims slid to 297,000 in the week ended May 5 from an upwardly revised 306,000 the prior week.
There were no special factors behind the drop in new claims, a Labor Department analyst said. The last time new claims were this low was in the week ended January 13, when they totaled 287,000.
Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting a rise of 10,000 in new claims from the initially reported 305,000 in the week ended April 28.
A four-week moving average of claims, which smoothes weekly volatility to provide a better sense of underlying job-market trends, slipped to 317,250 in the latest week from 328,750 the prior week.
The total number of people still on the benefit rolls after drawing an initial week of aid rose more than expected to 2.56 million in the April 28 week, the latest week for which data is available, from 2.49 million the prior week.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job creation during April, 2007 was fewer than 100000 jobs. ADP, which handles payroll services for so many businesses estimated that job creation was actually closer to 66000 jobs.
So why does every business in the US and every employment agency, search firm and temporary agency complain that there are not enough job applicants available to fill their job openings?
Go to websites that recruiters frequent and the story is the same--we are trying to fill positions. Where can we find someone with ____ experience? Companies are contacting recruiters and begging for help.
So where is the disconnect with the government numbers?
The government numbers are right but the interpretation of the numbers by the press is wrong.
We have a labor shortage.
After all the hubbub (or was it a hullaballoo) about all the jobs going to India, the US economy is finding it hard to find enough people for the work that it needs done.
Did you know that the US employs more IT workers today than it did at the time the last recession started? That little tidbit has been buried in the wake of fear about a housing market collapse that hasn't happened, the sub-prime mess and the stories about the failure of the war in Iraq.
And we still only admit 65000 new H-1b workers into the US. As a result, we are way short of what we would have working here if the protectionist cuts wasn't passed during the last recession.
You see, up until that time, we had over 200000 workers arriving in the US. That means we have been short over 135000 workers per year for the passed 5 years--or 750000 workers sicne the cuts went into effect.
You think business could have used a few of those?
Anyway, salaries are pushing up in almost all fields as firms try to cope with the shortages. Individuals with H-1b visas are no no longer being treated poorly at employment firms. Some of you may remember the days when the call would go something like this, " Do you have a visa? Sorry, we can't help you."
Now, more and more calls go, "Do you have a visa? No problem. The client will do a transfer."
And for those of you who resent that jobs go to people with visas, the reason is not the desire for cheap labor; it is because the people have the skills that firms want and you don't.
So, it's time to increase H-1b visa admissions to the US and offer businesses the skilled labor they need to face the demands that we will have in the next decade.
Jeff Altman, The BigGame Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.
To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s free job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, or his staffing ezine, “Natural Selection”, or to learn about his VIP program,go to www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.comTo add your firm’s career page to “The Universe” email the url to jobsearchuniverse@gmail.com.
If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at thebiggamehunter@cisny.com(If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).
If you have a question that you would like me to answer pertaining to job hunting or hiring, email it to him at: thebiggamehunter@gmail.com
"Cringely says that IBM has begun massive layoffs in a quiet manner, starting with 1300 employees, but by the end of the year, the total will rise to at least 100,000 and probably closer to 150,000 employees, nearly 40% of their U.S. workforce. Some people will be temporarily retained as contractors at a fraction of their salary, and eventually, IBM will also dump many of the unprofitable customer contracts worked on by Global Services or outsource the work to Asia. If these people are looking for work, that could seriously drop wages for technical workers in the US since they will have to compete with these people for available jobs."
The world's largest technology services company, is cutting 1,315 services-related jobs in the United States, a union trying to organize IBM workers said on Tuesday. "We're putting in place a series of actions to address our U.S. cost base, including a basic focus on resource and cost management disciplines and rebalancing of resources as we execute our global resource strategy," Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said on a conference call with analysts on April 17, according to a transcript of the call.
Loughridge said in April that IBM's first quarter was "noticeably weaker" in the United States, especially in the industrial, financial services and communications industries. The job cuts follow an IBM announcement on Monday that it planned to hire 500 people at a new customer call center in Daleville, Indiana, through 2010.
Corporate layoff announcements nationwide totaled 70,672 in April, an increase of 44.2 percent compared with the 48,997 job cuts announced in March and 18.4 percent from the 59,688 in April 2006, according to the Challenger Job-Cut Report released today.
The increase reflects layoffs in the financial sector, led by huge cuts at Citigroup but also including job losses from the subprime mortgage meltdown.
The Challenger report serves as a leading indicator for unemployment claims. But, EconoDay notes, not all layoff announcements result in immediate job cuts.
Food wholesaler Nash Finch Co. will put 300 employees out of work at its Westville distribution plant.
The layoffs will be efffective June 4, but some may come before then, the company told the Indiana Workforce Development department.Both union and non-union positions will be cut.
The decision to cut jobs came after a major customer informed Nash Finch it will end its contract June 2, the company said.
In Pike County, administrators say as many as 300 employees could be laid off.
Pike County School Officials say it all boils down to not having enough money.
All non-tenured employees could be on the chopping block.
School board officials already sent out layoff notices to all of them letting them know they may not be back next year.
Second year Pike County Central teacher Dedra Hall says she loves her job teaching English, but she might not be back next year.
She received a termination letter.
“I knew I was getting it, so I wasn't surprised,” Hall said.
Potential layoffs haven't been a secret.
First year superintendent Roger Wagner has said all year long budget problems will force them to cut staff next year.
“I'm not gonna say it was easy. It's been the most difficult task or challenge I've had facing me so far,” Superintendent Wagner said.
He says over-staffing issues and the new state mandated raises are the problem.
There's just simply not enough money to pay everyone's salary next year.
All non-tenured employees, 156 teachers and 153 other staff members, got a layoff notice. Superintendent Wagner says a termination letter doesn't necessarily mean they're gone for good.
He says more money from the state and federal funds could help ease the financial crunch and prevent some of the layoffs.
“We kind of have to wait and see how all of those come in to see exactly what our budget is looking at and that's going to drive a lot on what we can do with this personnel,” Wagner said.
The waiting game isn't easy for those with the letters.
“Anxiety, there's always anxiety if you think about losing your job,” Hall said.
Dedra Hall doesn't know if she'll be teaching English, but she has no plans for a career change. Superintendent Wagner says he hopes to have the final budget sometime this month and says he will notify all of those who might be out of the job as soon as possible.
DETROIT (AP) — The city's school district has sent layoff notices to 555 teachers, counselors and other union members who could lose their jobs at the end of this academic year, the teachers' union said.
The notices were sent to the Detroit Public Schools employees last week, the Detroit Federation of Teachers said. Some could be called back later, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News reported Saturday.
The layoff notices come as Michigan's largest school district continues to face budget problems and declining enrollment.
By Tim Barker ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 05/03/2007 To understand the strength of the labor market facing this year's crop of graduating college students, just scroll through the advertisements posted on university job boards.At any given time, the site run by the placement office at Southern Illinois University's Edwardsville campus has more than 650.
"Prior to this year, we would have been happy with 300," said Jean Paterson, the office's director.
It's a good time to be among the thousands of area college students being set loose into the real world. As always, some degrees will get more attention than others.
But in general, the nation's employers are planning to do a lot of hiring — nearly 20 percent more than last year, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
While there are no figures available for the St. Louis area, placement offices here say on-campus recruitment has been brisk.
"It seems like hiring is pretty good right now," said Mark Smith, director of the career center at Washington University.Many of the degrees with the highest demand — information sciences, computer science and marketing, for example — go hand-in-hand with the region's growth.
Professional and business services, which includes a variety of white-collar professions are among the top jobs-producing sectors locally.There probably isn't a single field of study that will guarantee a job. But a degree in accounting is the best one to be armed with, according to the colleges and employers association.That's not a surprise to James Castellano, chairman of RubinBrown LLP, a St. Louis accounting firm.
"If someone is interested in business, I can't think of a better start than accounting," said Castellano, whose firm plans to hire as many as 20 graduates this year to cope with turnover and growth of the practice.Top students will choose from a variety of offers. Signing bonuses will be common.
Just ask Washington University senior Andrew Mascarenhas, 21, who accepted an offer late last year from Ernst & Young LLP in St. Louis. It came with a cash bonus.The future accountant isn't offering any specifics. But he says the money has come in handy while decorating his apartment.
"On a college student's budget, a bonus is a significant infusion of cash," Mascarenhas said. "We've been spending it on furniture and that sort of thing."Of course, not everyone wants to be an accountant.
Elvedin Arnautovic, 29, is graduating with a degree in marketing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He's had several interviews, but so far the offers have been in sales — something he'd prefer to avoid. With a full-time job as an interpreter at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the Bosnian native wasn't able to take an internship during his junior year. It's a mistake he wishes he could fix.
"No one asks me about my GPA," Arnautovic said. "They want to know about my experience. What have you done? What can you show us?
"Those internships — while providing valuable experience for the students — are an increasingly important key to hiring top graduates, particularly for companies in the more competitive fields.
Clark Davis, chief administrative officer for Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum Inc. in St. Louis, said his company is looking to hire as many as two dozen workers, half of them college graduates. The company also will add a dozen interns this summer, giving the architectural firm an early look at next year's talent pool.
"There is a competition for talent among design and construction companies that we haven't seen for a long time," said Davis, who serves as a mentor to students through the Regional Business Council's Higher Education Collaboration. "It's pretty fair to say that most of us are in a pretty serious hiring mode.
"There are signs, however, that change could be coming.
John Challenger, a Chicago-based workplace expert with Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said hiring has been expanding since summer of 2003. But trouble in the residential housing market and other areas may be hard to shake off.
"I do think the economy is slowing," Challenger said. "That will affect the job market for several years."But that's not likely to hurt this year's graduates — many of them have only themselves to blame for not yet finding work.
"There are those that just wait and wait," said Paterson of Southern Illinois University.For proof of this, look again to the placement office's job board. Traditionally, the busiest day of the year for traffic is the day after graduation.
"That's when Mom and Dad start asking what they're going to be doing next," Paterson said.
tbarker@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8350
ompanies plan to grab 20 percent more college graduates this year than last.
Here's a look at which bachelor's degrees are in the highest demand: 1. Accounting 2. Business administration/management 3. Computer science 4. Electrical engineering 5. Mechanical engineering 6. Information sciences and systems 7. Marketing/marketing management 8. Computer engineering 9. Civil engineering 10. Economics/finance
Source: Job Outlook 2007, National Association of Colleges and Employers
Jobless rate up to 4.5 percent; payroll growth slowest in two years
By John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC
Updated: 12:54 p.m. CT May 4, 2007
The government reported Friday that the economy added just 88,000 jobs last month, the slowest pace of job creation in more than two years, as an ongoing housing slump continued to put a damper on the pace of hiring and business growth.
The jobs growth slowdown nudged the nation's unemployment rate up to 4.5 percent. Friday’s report also said the number of new jobs in February and March turned out to be weaker than originally reported. Gains in workers’ wages also slowed in April.
The report adds to evidence of a slowing economy. The nation's gross domestic product grew at a sluggish 1.3 percent rate in the first quarter, the weakest in four years, the government reported last week. That slow growth is expected to continue at least until the housing industry recovers. Many economists suggest that a prolonged slowdown could help work off the excesses of the housing boom and prevent the economy from tipping into a recession.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke believes the economy will avoid falling into a recession this year, although his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, has put the odds of a recession at one in three.
The weak jobs report bolsters the widely held view that the Federal Reserve will leave the key federal funds interest rate at 5.25 percent when it meets Wednesday. The Fed has held the rate steady since last August, ending a two-year string of rate increases intended to ward off inflation.
As expected, Friday’s report showed the construction and manufacturing sectors were hit hard in April, with a net loss of 29,000 jobs for the month.
Until recently, despite a steep downturn in home sales and housing starts, jobs in housing-related sectors had been holding up fairly well. While the market seemed to be recovering at the beginning of the year, it now appears many parts of the housing industry — from contractors to real estate agents to building supply companies — have been holding out for an upturn.
“These folks were waiting for the pickup in construction in the spring and summer, and that’s not happening,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.com. “It was a great run, a lot of money was made and people are just reluctant to leave the industry. And it has taken a while for them to adjust their thinking with respect to future of the industry and their prospects for gainful employment.”
Forecasts vary on the timing of a housing industry turnaround, but many homebuilders and economists say it probably won’t happen before at least early 2008.
“It will probably take about a year before housing reaches the outright bottom,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp. “But the biggest drag on the economy will be behind us by the middle of this year.”
Friday’s jobs report showed a net loss of 19,000 manufacturing jobs in April, as the job outlook for factory workers continues to deteriorate, especially in the auto industry.
With U.S. manufacturing still in decline, prospects for future job growth depend heavily on the U.S. consumer continuing to spend. The latest data show spending holding up, but barely. In March, consumer spending edged higher but posted its weakest gain in five months in part because higher gasoline prices put a crimp in household budgets.
The slowdown in wages reported in Friday’s employment report could further dampen spending. Average hourly earnings rose to $17.25 in April, a 0.2 percent increase from March. Economists were expecting a modest 0.3 percent rise. Over the past 12 months, wages grew by 3.7 percent, the slowest annual increase in a year.
Household budgets are already showing other, long-term signs of stress, according to Brian Fabbri, chief economist with BNP Paribas.
“We’ve never seen this much increase in debt relative to income, and we’ve never seen the proportion of current income that has to service that debt,” he said. “The consumer has dipped into saving in a meaningful way — we’ve had 20 months in a row of negative savings. That can’t go on forever because you just exhaust savings.”
Friday’s report showed the job losses spreading beyond manufacturing and construction and into retailing and financial services.
But health care and education, leisure and hospitality, government and various professional and business services were among the sectors adding positions.
The relatively strong outlook for service jobs was boosted by a report Thursday from the Institute for Supply Management, an industry group that publishes a widely watched index of business activity. That index rebounded strongly in April, posting its biggest gain in year, with the finance and insurance industry among those sectors reporting growth.
“[That’s] a positive indication that the sharp escalation of subprime mortgage problems in February and March may have peaked at the end of March and abated somewhat in recent weeks,” wrote economist Brian Bethune of Global Insight.
But it remains to be seen whether the financial impact of the collapse of subprime lending has run its course. That’s because many of these mortgages were bundled into pools of loans, chopped up into securities and sold off to investors and hedge funds. Because the holders of these so-called “collateralized debt obligations” can delay taking losses, it may be some months before the full impact of the subprime mortgage meltdown is known
“They can hold on for some time as credit quality continues to erode,” said Zandi.
The Swiss bank UBS became the latest casualty of the U.S. mortgage market when it surprised investors Thursday by reporting lower first quarter profits and said it was closing down its Dillon Read hedge fund because of heavy losses in subprime loans.
Greeneville, Morristown furniture makers to lay off number of workers +
By MICHAEL SILENCE, silence@knews.com May 1, 2007
Cutbacks at two East Tennessee furniture makers will result in the loss of 155 jobs, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Monday.
According to the state, MECO Corp. in Greeneville is laying off 115 employees effective June 15. The company manufactures residential and commercial folding furniture, outdoor barbecue grills and motorcycle accessories. It markets the consumer products under the MECO, Samsonite and Aussie brand names throughout the United States.
An official with MECO parent company Unaka Co. is disputing the number of layoffs reported by the state. Human Resources Director Dominick Jackson said the number is more like 80, but he declined further comment.
Unaka, also in Greeneville, issued a brief statement Monday that said "economic losses" leave it unable to "continue operating most of the manufacturing part of the plant."
The statement described the action as a "mass layoff" but did not indicate a number of job losses. It said employees have been given 60 days' notice of the job terminations.
In the statement, Jackson said, "There will still be some manufacturing employees at the MECO site, as well as those who will be supporting the distribution and shipping of products to our customers. In addition, there will still be some office employees who will be supporting Unaka operations in Tennessee, South Carolina and Indiana.
"We are saddened to announce the mass layoff. Our employees are our first concern, and we will make every effort to work with them in their search for new employment," Jackson continued. The state said it has also received notice from University Loft in Morristown that it has laid off 40 people and closed.
University Loft vehemently denied the closing, saying, "that facility is going great guns," according to Susan Winter, human resources director for the University Loft operations in Indianapolis, Ind.
She said the company had hired 70 to 80 temporary workers to fill a large order, but she wasn't sure that the number of temporary workers who are no longer there would total 40.
"We do not have massive layoffs. Business is going great," Winter said.
She added that the company has several years left on its lease and has "no intentions of closing that facility."
She said the company, which makes furniture for colleges and universities, would be following up with the state on Monday's statement.
Milissa Reierson, spokeswoman for the labor department, said a company official notified the department on April 19 via telephone that it would be laying off people and closing.
