JOB LOSS NEWS!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

US postal service LAYING OFF 40,000


Postal Service Looks To Cut 40,000 Jobs In First Layoff In History


SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) - "We lost 2 billion dollars and like any other business we have to stay afloat." And to keep from sinking, the United States Postal Service is considering cutting thousands of jobs nationwide. Lavelle Pepper with the post office in Shreveport says they too are feeling the affects of the same disease hitting the country... a struggling economy. "We employ about 685,000 people. If we do layoffs it would include clerks, carriers, mail handlers across all crafts."


Comments: Who would layoff 40k DISGRUNTLED POSTAL WORKERS? Are they crazy? Can you imagine what will happen to their managers? Ouch.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Layoffs hit every Corner

Layoffs hit every corner

CNN REPORT

Eight companies spanning several different industries announce nearly 15,000 layoffs in first week of November.

By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: November 8, 2008: 11:40 AM ET


AMERICA'S MONEY CRISIS


* Wall Street's eyes on the consumer

* 2 more banks go belly-up

* Year of the bailout - and now GM?

* Layoffs hit every corner

* Kashkari: Bank bailout just beginning



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The first week of November has been brutal for the job market, with nearly 15,000 announced job cuts from a slew of companies across multiple industries.


Eight companies announced job cuts this week as a means of cost-cutting during desperate times, representing industries as widespread as retail, finance, leisure, pharmaceutical and toy and automobile manufacturing.


On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy sloughed nearly 1.2 million jobs through October. Just in the month of October, the economy lost 240,000 jobs, raising the unemployment rate to 6.5%.


"We're losing jobs just about everywhere," said Robert Brusca, chief economist and Fact and Opinion Economics. "People are slowing their spending on everything. Now, even wealthier people are reluctant to spend money."


Circuit City (CC, Fortune 500), an electronics retailer based in Richmond, Va., kicked off the week by announcing on Monday that it was reducing its domestic workforce by 17%. The company would not comment on the number of employees that would be affected, but according to a recent 10K filing, Circuit City employs about 43,000 people in the U.S. That would mean roughly 7,300 positions are being lost, the biggest of the cuts in November so far.


On Tuesday, the Connecticut-based insurer Hartford Financial (HIG, Fortune 500) reported 500 cuts.


The following day, the British drug company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said it would cut 1,000 sales positions.


Thursday was particularly gloomy, with four companies announcing cuts: 1,300 from Fidelity Investments of Boston, 1,000 from toy maker Mattel (MAT, Fortune 500), based in El Segundo, Calif., 375 from Borgata Hotel Casino of Atlantic City, N.J., and 850 from La-Z-Boy (LZB), a furniture producer and retailer based in Monroe, Mich.


Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) was the most recent to announce job cuts, with 2,600 cuts announced on Friday. The battered auto maker said it was trying to hold on to its dwindling cash reserves as it reported a $3 billion operating loss for the third quarter.


Most of the cuts are slated for the U.S., though Mattel said its job cuts will affect its global workforce.


"You have essentially every sector, every industry, furloughing workers, so it's going to get bad - considerably worse - before it gets better," said Richard Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research. "If the automotive sector falls, and it's on the ledge, then you could very easily have double-digit employment."


Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said that Hartford and Fidelity are getting squeezed by the plunging value of the stock markets. But he said the other companies - and even the drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline - are getting stifled by a consumer lock-down on any type of spending that is not totally necessary.


"You don't have to buy a La-Z-Boy today, but you might have to go to the doctor, you have to eat, and you have to pay rent," said Achuthan. "[The companies] are seeing that the consumer has been stunned or is frozen and will not make any purchases that he will not absolutely have to make."


As for Glaxo, Achutan said that many Americans get their health insurance through their jobs, and when they lose their jobs, it affects the drugmakers. He said newly-uninsured people are spending their money on food and housing, instead of drugs.


Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, dismissed any notion that the job market would pick up in 2009, given the omnipresent nature of the layoffs, and the fact that they stem from a "credit freeze on top of a recession caused by a housing meltdown."


"The fact is that we're going to have very high unemployment for several years," said Mishel.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

DHL CARGO has serious problems


http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/09/news...e.ap/index.htm


DHL could see big layoffs: report

November 9, 2008: 9:13 AM ET


BERLIN (AP) -- Deutsche Post AG plans to announce a cost-saving program that could result in thousands of layoffs at its DHL cargo shipper in the United States, a German weekly reported Sunday.


Deutsche Post spokeswoman Barbara Scheil refused to comment on the report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, ahead of a news conference planned for Monday.


The paper reported that as many as 40,000 jobs could be threatened, roughly half of them at the DHL's U.S. Express business. DHL employs thousands at an air cargo facility in Wilmington, Ohio, whose jobs could be threatened.


Deutsche Post slashed its earnings forecasts for both 2008 and 2009 late last month, saying it expects pretax profit to fall 8 percent in the third quarter "as the global economic environment deteriorated markedly."


Tough competition from UPS (UPS, Fortune 500) and FedEx (FDX, Fortune 500) also has taken some of DHL's share of the valuable U.S. market. Reports suggest that both FedEx and UPS have taken major customers from DHL in recent weeks, including online merchants, major drug store chains and franchise businesses.


Comments: Every sector is being affected by these massive layoffs. I can't see a depression being avoided. FEDEX USPS and UPS are also laying off, this means they anticipate buyers will be not buying anything for Christmas ..looks like it could be catastrophic!

dadda > agree this is not very encouraging to see what is going on ... however I think it is useful to publish this sort of information so that people can make informed decisions based on what is happening in the economy.


There are a number of other threads on the crisis including:


http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/forums/living-in-or-moving-to-hong-kong/threads/120744/coping-with-the-crisis/


http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/forums/hong-kong-property/threads/114674/hong-kong-property-market-correction?/

My intention was only to show which sectors were getting headlines in the layoff arena. The US posting 240K job losses in October without breaking it down is not helping us protect our interests being that our jobs or our investments.


I am still quite surprised by how many intelligent people I know are in denial about what in unfolding right now. Be positive but be prepared!

Agree - I speak to quite a few people who think this will blow over with relatively minimal damage...


Hopefully it does but without question, this is the biggest crisis that we have faced since the 1930's.... it is far, far worse than the dotcom crash or asian financial crisis...

That's where is starts, more international Job Losses to come!

This entire crisis started in the US - and some claimed we would be immune in Asia.


Not so.


Layoffs across the board are on the way - ask any property agent or recruiter how biz is...


I was told by one recruiter that finance related hiring is virtually non-existent. His firm was still handling requests from firms in other industries such as logistics when I spoke to him about 4 weeks back - but no doubt that too will grind to a halt soon - stores cannot give away fall merchandise in America and Xmas stuff is piling in....


This is a global crisis.

Nobody said Asia was immune what I said anyway was that it is lean already and in every country except China, there is not much fat around. South East Asia had its own financial crisis, the effects of which were still noticeable less than 4 years ago. It's going to take more than a couple of years of boom for those economies and the companies that depend on them for sales to have become fat and bloated. We had to pay the piper already and we have, and we did our restructuring over the last decade and it was painful.


There may be job losses in Asia ex China, but they will be at the margin, Hong Kong in financial services gets bloated very quickly during every boom, those jokers leave and go home now and find something else to do (but if you want a rough guide just look at percentage reductions in investment banking headcounts in Asia compared the Europe and the US, its not even close in fact they are still hiring here very selectively).


People get used to a a Hang Seng that is range bound and an anaemic property market, which is no different than it was just a few years back and how it was for almost the entire time during the handover up till 2004/2005.


So it doesn't really matter what property agents or recruiters say, they have seen it worse than this a lot worse actually. We know what tough times mean, but for the most, our restructuring has been done, there is a lot of pain still to be felt in America and Europe, and some in Asia, but what we feel here is going to be nothing like what they feel over there. so yes Asia will hold up a lot better, its positioned that way, companies that are lean and not bloated, well capitalised banks, little exposure to US property, and high savings rates. There will of course be exceptions but so what.


What happens in China, I haven't got a clue.

DB > plenty of people have claimed that Asia would be insulated from a US crash - in particular I can recall numerous many articles explaining how the HK property market would continue climbing and tossing out so much baloney to justify their positions... There are reams of claims from analysts discussing the decoupling and the reduced importance of US markets - all which have proved to be incorrect (how they could claim that Asia would not be affected by a drop in US consumer demand was and is ludicrous)


In any event the point is that layoffs in the US are very relevant to Asia.


Layoffs = more defaults = more bank problems = less demand for china goods = immense impact in Hong Kong (the real money in HK is China trade related at the end of the day) = big problems.


As for China this has implications far beyond the economy...

I don't think anyone would ever claim that Asia is going to be unaffected. How could they. Decoupling was an argument that was being made well before Lehman collapsed, just as the Bear funds began imploding and people in America were starting to mention the R word, then it became common view recession was going to occur, which, technically it still hasn't. Some people back then were sanguine because they simply thought recession would be shallow like the last one that occurred in America, People had come to expect that they could brush these things off and they thought that China could power through it. Well clearly its not going to be a shallow recession and I think anyone who makes the argument that there is decoupling going on, will have been half right, but more wrong than they were correct. Sure Asia itself can pick up some slack, but it cannot cope if US demand collapses altogether.


That kind of optimism gets punished more often than not and if you took positions based on that view then it has, I don't think those same people would be saying quite the same thing now, how could they.



Do I see US demand collapsing. No. Yes it will fall but I don't see collapse. I think people in America will in fact be more price sensitive then they are already, make more trips to Walmart rather than JC penny and expect to save more money and prefer to buy Chinese white labelled goods because they cost less. Marginal producers with bad cost structures that rely on high prices will die, but this is a time for Chinese manufacturers to make their move, and increase their market share in America at the expense of say the Japanese or the Koreans. Companies that have scale can source raw materials cheaply and have low cost structures will probably benefit over the long haul. Companies like Haier, Hi-sense or Keelon as we know it stand to gain. I do not see China exporting much less deflation than it does already. They have global brands now that should be using people cost consciousness to pick up increased market share and gain credibility so people don't look down on owning them any more. Asian car manufacturers who produce cheaper cars in transplant factories in the US and don't have huge financing arms or legacy labour costs stand to gain. There is a lot of opportunity for some companies even with a deep prolonged recession in that country where overall sales figures for the goods we talk about decline.


I have no idea what is going to happen to China, how resilient it is, how much it can rely on its own demand taking up the slack for falling US demand. Quite simply what has occurred in China over the last 3 decades has never happened before, and In China, two completely opposite things can be true at the same time, it is enigmatic. China is of course fat in some places but it is also anorexic in others. They have just announced this massive stimulus package, who knows how much that will help mitigate a slow down in US demand. I haven't got a clue


The rest of SE Asia is lean, we had to starve for a few years, we are used to it, more importantly we are stronger for it. I don't know how bad it is going to get in the US and Europe, my sense is they will have to restructure, and I have no doubt they will.


Do I think that Asia is going to feel the kind of pain they feel, no. Our threshold is really high to begin with, and we can take it, we have had no choice in the past, and neither do they now, and eventually when they get to that point as well, then hopefully there will be some light at the end of the tunnel.


A range bound index and cheap property did not kill us before, it wont kill again, it's just a pain in the backside that we would rather do without, Its a much better town when the moolah is rolling in, but what can you do.

The US quite simply had Massive Consumption. China had massive Exports. When the two get slammed as we are seeing, you have to look to domestic growth but both are too little too late! There will be a messy lag and downturn that will screw everyone over until 2010+ then things would VERY SLOWLY resume.


On the sidelines, all other Western and Eastern countries go for the ride lagging behind. Unfortunately, HK gets pulled back in forth in the downward spiral of both.


If you take the time to build in various scenarios and use a multitude of indicators from all sources and economists I believe the above simply problem is your answer.

I agree - Asia for the most part learned lessons from previous regional crisis and will not be hit like the US (its a really really good policy to only lend to people who can afford to pay back and who can make a significant downpayment eh....)

Indeed, indeed, the other thing we still hold valuable is the concept that you buy what you can afford and you save for things you cannot or for a rainy day.


There will be a recession in America, there is no data which confirms that one is occurring right now because the current quarter or the next one hasn't been completed and we haven't got the data. I am pretty sure there will be one if its not right now then at least in the next quarters.


If you want to take a view, by all means do, but what you are suggesting is crystal ball gazing and nothing more.


I can tell you this much, whatever happens China will continue to grow, if it doesn't than we can all expect regime change in that country, and if it happens through some kind of revolution, then if you think sh*t hit the fan in September and October and in the markets, wait for it to start really flying because we haven't seen anything yet.

You hit the nail on the head re PRC...

My husband is from the states and has been working in Asia for the past 15 years as an art director to exporters/importers. He lost his job a few weeks ago. There are thousands of factories closing and with US companies downsizing, it's inevitable that jobs in Asia will be affected.

namaste, this is now an unfortunate regular occurance.


Exactly to the case in point to the 85% HK owned PRD (Pearl River Delta) and most of southern china. My factory is one the first in Donguan and while being likely the oldest all the new ftys around it are closing down.


We have had to lay off 50% of our workers due to reduced demand but basically the PRC started pushing through programs starting 2 years ago. Laborers in my fty who were farmers from northern china were equalized under programs to go home and start farming again I would guess to anticipate the domestic demand.


Many ftys right now that I have visited have flipped to 50/50 domestic/export mix.


All the MD's I know who run consumer based brands and either have their own ftys or outsource have lost 50%+ of their global demand already and counting so where are all these jobs going to go.


I draw the same parallel to the US with their mounting job losses and quite simply say again, the gap between these losses and jump starting infrastructure programs in time to head them off is not going to happen.


Stimulus programs are only going to try and fill the gap and this will take time (2 years min) and a toll on both countries, subsequently the rest!!


The HKers who have already lost 50%+ on the HSI, then heavily committed to dwindling production demand and then toasted by property downturn, I see the writing simply on the wall.

Monday, November 3, 2008

China going into a DEPRESSION TOO?

Financially troubled plants are being abandoned by the boss, leaving behind unpaid workers and debts.

By Don Lee

November 3, 2008


Reporting from Shaoxing, China -- First, Tao Shoulong burned his company's financial books. He then sold his private golf club memberships and disposed of his Mercedes S-600 sedan.


And then he was gone.


And just like that, China's biggest textile dye operation -- with four factories, a campus the size of 31 football fields, 4,000 workers and debts of at least $200 million -- was history.


"We're pretty much dead now," said Mao Youming, one of 300 suppliers stiffed last month by Tao's company, Jianglong Group. Lighting a cigarette in a coffee shop here, the 38-year-old spoke calmly about the bleak future of his industrial gas business. Tao owed him $850,000, Mao said, about 60% of his annual revenue. "We cannot pay our workers' salaries. We are about to be bankrupt too."


Government statistics show that 67,000 factories of various sizes were shuttered in China in the first half of the year, said Cao Jianhai, an industrial economics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. By year's end, he said, more than 100,000 plants will have closed.


As more factories in China shut down, stories of bosses running away have become familiar, multiplying the damage of China's worst manufacturing decline in at least a decade.


Even before the global financial crisis, factory owners in China were straining under soaring labor and raw-material costs, an appreciating Chinese currency and tougher legal, tax and environmental requirements. When the credit crunch took hold -- prompting Western businesses to slash orders for Chinese goods and bankers to curtail loans to factories -- many operations were pushed over the edge.

I disagree with the sentiment that Asia is leaner and is better positioned to handle the downturn. In fact, I think the exact opposite. One of the reasons we are seeing a delayed reaction is because other countries (in particular, in Asia) are not as self-exploratory or critical (freedom of speech and press) as the U.S. is. Imagine if you had people like Meredith Whitney who had the power to expose Citi and the rest of the financials in China and other Asian countries. Just because you do not hear about the problems do not mean they don't exist. Suffice to say, it's just a matter of time as in how long many Asian companies, in China in particular, can manage to ride out the turmoil in hiding, without being forced out. Asian companies have the luxury of government control of speech and press.

lucybrown, so true! How soon we forget how little information we receive from China.


Chinese statistics and Chinese milk packaging have something in common. Do not believe what you read on the label. Just as state-owned companies allowed suppliers to boost the supposed protein content of infant milk powder with melamine, an industrial plastic, so state-controlled statisticians have sometimes doctored official figures to suit the Communist party’s needs.


The goal has been smooth growth. Thus state figures have sometimes underestimated true expansion. Likewise, in the previous slowdown, when electricity generation stalled, economic activity mysteriously rumbled on unaffected. Thus when we learn that China will, over two years, pump Rmb4,000bn ($586bn, €466bn) into an economy growing at “only” 9 per cent a year – a veritable comedown from the 10-12 per cent an octane-fuelled populace has come to expect – we should sniff the contents suspiciously.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

CHINA closes 67,000 FACTORIES-GM cost for bailout? 200 BILLION!


The slowdown in exports contributed to the closing of at least 67,000 factories across China in the first half of the year, according to government statistics. Labor disputes and protests over lost back wages have surged, igniting fear in local officials. I sat in disbelief reading today’s Shenzhen local paper stating that Some 9,000 of the 45,000 factories in the cities of Guangzhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen are expected to close down in the next three months according to the Dongguan City Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment estimates. Those closures would see up to 2.7 million jobs cut as overseas demand for consumer goods and clothes fades, that’s more than 50,000+ a day if you believe official figures, which I do not, and I believe number is actually higher.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0Ee7HIsw7Ao&refer=home

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

693,000 JOBS lost in DEC. most since 1945!

Excerpt


U.S. December Job Cuts Quadruple From Year Ago, Challenger Says

By Courtney Schlisserman


Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Job cuts announced by U.S. employers almost quadrupled in December from a year earlier, paced by declines at financial firms, chemical makers and retailers as the recession rippled through the economy.


Firing announcements rose 275 percent last month from December 2007, to 166,348, Chicago-based Challenger. Gray & Christmas Inc. said today. For all of 2008, employers announced 1.22 million job cuts, the most in five years.


The economy is caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of rising job losses and declines in consumer spending that threatens to extend and deepen the economic slump this year. President-elect Barack Obama has said his top priority after taking office will be to pass a stimulus package that will save or create 3 million jobs.


“Unfortunately, heavy job-cutting could continue through at least the first half of 2009,” John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the placement company, said in a statement. “Nearly every industry experienced higher job cuts in 2008, as fallout from the collapse of the housing and financial markets spread throughout the economy.”


The U.S. economy probably lost 500,000 jobs in December, according to the median projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News ahead of the Labor Department’s Jan. 9 employment report. That would bring the total decline for last year to 2.4 million, the most since 1945.

Excerpt


By Rex Nutting

Last update: 10:03 a.m. EST Jan. 7, 2009