Entries Tagged 'Jobs' ↓
February 6th, 2009 — Credit Crisis, Economy, Jobs, Labor, Layoffs, Unemployment
Employers cut nearly 600,000 jobs in January, the largest payroll cut in 34 years, causing the national unemployment rate to skyrocket to 7.6%, according to the Labor Department report released on Friday morning.
January’s job cuts were much worse than the 525,000 that had been projected by Wall Street analysts, who also had predicted that the unemployment rate would come in at only 7.5%.
January’s rash of pink slips was the most since 602,000 in December of 1974.
The manufacturing sector was the hardest hit, losing 207,000 jobs right on top of a 162,000 job loss in December.
View the U.S. Dept. of Labor report
September 17th, 2008 — Economy, Employment, Investment Banking, Investment Banks, Jobs, Layoffs, Lehman Bros., Lehman Brothers
UK lender Barclays has released a statement that said it is considering whether to hire employees from Lehman Brothers’ European operations, in the wake of its agreement to acquire the failed investment bank’s U.S. broker/dealer business.
Barclays Capital, the lender’s investment banking arm, has cited the equities and equity capital markets businesses as probable target areas. Bank management is looking to capitalize on an opportunity to bring new talent on board from the U.K. and Europe.
The statements from Barclays will give hope to many of the 4,000+ who were employed by Lehman’s London offices.
April 2nd, 2008 — Economy, Investment Banks, Jobs, Layoffs, Market Crash
Analysts are predicting that the pace that U.S. financial organizations are laying off employees will only accelerate over the next year as banks cut costs in the face of the housing market crash and the weak economy.
Analysts at the financial research firm Celent LLC said in a report issued yesterday that they project the U.S. commercial banking industry — all companies that lend or collect deposits — to lose 200,000 of its 2 million jobs over the next 12 to 18 months.
In 2007, the entire financial services sector announced job cuts that totaled 153,000, according to the job placement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. More than half of the 2007 cuts were in the mortgage-lending business, and occurred primarily in New York and California.
The analysts said more layoffs are inevitable as the subprime crisis spreads to other parts of the banking industry and reaches beyond mortgages to mortgage-related products, such as home-equity loans, and other types of lending, such as credit cards.
The credit crisis began last summer when the markets tightened up at the sight of spiking subprime mortgage defaults.
In January, financial companies said that they were cutting 16,000 U.S. jobs, and companies said in February they were trimming 6,000 more.
The recently purchased investment bank Bear Stearns has 14,000 staffers, and JPMorgan Chase has not yet announced how much of that staff it intends to keep.
What we haven’t seen yet are mega-layoffs — tens of thousands of people in a large company in one fell swoop. But according to analysts, that’s coming.