Posted on 02/07/2014 5:56:59 AM PST by KeyLargo
2014 January Job Cut Report: Planned Cuts Surge 50 Percent
After falling to a 13-year low in December, monthly job cuts surged nearly 50 percent to kick off 2014, as U.S.-based employers announced plans to reduce their payrolls by 45,107 in January, according to the latest report on monthly job cuts released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
The 45,107 job cuts last month were 47 percent higher than a December total of 30,623, which was the lowest one-month total since 17,241 planned layoffs were announced in June 2000. January job cuts were up 12 percent from the same month a year ago, when 40,430 job cuts were recorded.
The heaviest downsizing activity occurred in retail, where poor earnings led to a wave of job cut announcements from several national chains, including Macy’s, Sam’s Club, JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy and Target. Overall, retailers announced 11,394 job cuts in January; a 71 percent increase from the 6,676 retail cuts tracked in January 2013. Last month’s retail cuts were the heaviest for the sector since last March, when 16,445 planned layoffs were announced.
“Holiday sales gains were relatively weak and many retailers achieved the gains by slashing prices on their products, which adversely impacted their year-end earnings. The post-holiday job-letting in the sector was inevitable,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“Retail employment will, in fact, fall further than the announced job cuts indicate. Starting in January, retailers started shedding the tens of thousands of temporary seasonal workers hired to help handle the holiday rush. The announced job cuts, on the other hand, will impact full-time, permanent workers in the stores and at the corporate offices of these struggling chains,” he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at challengergray.com ...
No problem. Just think of the better quality of life you will have since you won’t have to work so many hours. Using a 30 hour standard work week, it means MORE jobs. A return to single paycheck standard of living as the 1960’s is propped up as ‘progress’.
Kudlow: President Obama’s work trap
Published: Thursday, 6 Feb 2014 By: Larry Kudlow | “The Kudlow Report” Anchor
So let me get this right. Team Obama taxes millionaires who create jobs, while Obamacare creates incentives not to work at those jobs. No wonder recovery is so anemic. The policy here is to create fewer jobs and induce people to work less at those jobs. If my logic is correct, this runs counter to the most basic principles of our economy and our country.
In the Obama scheme, an industrious person climbing the ladder of opportunity is penalized heavily for his or her success. Health-care subsidies are reduced as a result of her higher income, while marginal tax rates go up as she shifts into a higher tax bracket. So she loses the government benefit and her effective federal tax climbs higher.
There is no ladder of opportunity here. It’s really a work trap that becomes a poverty trap. It’s similar to the other traps found in welfare, food stamps, unemployment compensation and the marriage penalty.
Democrats defend this work trap as providing more leisure time. But they forget to tell you that the perverse health-care incentives that lead to less work also lead to less income, less wealth, less opportunity and less economic freedom to prosper.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101397361
Happy days are here again! Let the good times roll. /sarc
America used to be the Land of the Free. Now its just the land of the freebie.
Why it’s like havin’ a 4 day weekend every week. Woo Hoo. More free time. Of course no money to do anything with that free time. “Under my plan, unemployment will necessarily skyrocket.”
So let me get this right. Team Obama taxes millionaires who create jobs,
____________________________________________________________
Reminds me of the “Luxury Tax” under clinton. Concept was to tax new luxury yacht purchases, etc...as a result, sales collapsed, companies closed and employees lost jobs.
Many people have concluded that they’d rather sit home, drink and cook hamburgers in the back yard than go to work everyday. Their only “responsibility” in life is to go out and vote Democrat every two years.
That's brilliant, actually.
LOL! What I actually meant was: “Under my plan, you mofo’s will necessarily depend on the govt for your mere survival.”
“2014 January Job Cut Report: Planned Cuts Surge 50 Percent
After falling to a 13-year low in December, monthly job cuts surged nearly 50 percent to kick off 2014, as U.S.-based employers announced plans to reduce their payrolls by 45,107 in January, according to the latest report on monthly job cuts released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
The 45,107 job cuts last month were 47 percent higher than a December total of 30,623, which was the lowest one-month total since 17,241 planned layoffs were announced in June 2000. January job cuts were up 12 percent from the same month a year ago, when 40,430 job cuts were recorded.
The heaviest downsizing activity occurred in retail, where poor earnings led to a wave of job cut announcements from several national chains, including Macy’s, Sam’s Club, JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy and Target. Overall, retailers announced 11,394 job cuts in January; a 71 percent increase from the 6,676 retail cuts tracked in January 2013. Last month’s retail cuts were the heaviest for the sector since last March, when 16,445 planned layoffs were announced.”
Plus: “” Washington’s official non-partisan bean-counter, the Congressional Budget Office, dropped a bomb. By 2024, says the CBO, Obamacare will reduce the size of the U.S. labor force by 2.5 million full-time-equivalent workers.”
My wife and I are both retired citizens. One of the things we do is to try to avoid traffic jams and crowds, when we go out for lunch and to do our errands.
So, when we go out to lunch it is usually after the so called lunch hour, 12:45 pm to 1 pm.
Since the first of the year, we have noticed two interesting trends:
1. Even less people than normal in the good restaurants and better so called fast food places for lunch. Problems, finding a parking place rarely occur now.
2. There is a what appears to be a mini rush hour re heavier traffic from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm, like we used to have after 3:30 pm and then @ 5:30 pm plus or minus a half hour. The drivers don’t appear to be going shopping or after school kids. Usually just a driver and no passengers, lining up at the traffic lights. Also, more than usual construction pickups during this time period are in the traffic mix.
My wife knows many friends and others, who have had their work day hours cut to 4 to 6 hours per day. Walmart, other chains, and independent stores are cutting the daily hours for their employees since the first of the year.
A younger relative couple living in an East Bay county are seeing similar traffic patterns re a new mini rush hours. The husband is getting home about 15 to 25 minutes early. He said the end of the work day traffic is a lot lighter, and the going to work traffic is about the same. The wife usually does her shopping and errands from 2 to 3:30 pm before picking up their kids at school. She said that the traffic loads during that time are similar to past years’s after 3:30 pm.
On 2/5/14, my wife and I saw the same weird traffic pattern, a mini rush hour from 1:30 to 2:30 pm.
Then, at 5:30 pm we took a dinner to a church couple, one of them is recovering from a hospital stay.
The traffic should have been very heavy at that time, and it was about the same or less than the earlier 1:30 to 2:30 pm.
Fifteen minutes later, it was even lighter, when we came home.
February 7, 2014 12:00 AM
Freedom for the Job-Locked
Dems’ desperate defense of Obamacare-induced unemployment
By Jonah Goldberg
It’s only February, but it’s already my favorite word — or phrase, I guess — of the year. (Who knows, by December it may be shortened to “joblock.”) It’s not euphonious or edgy, but it does offer insight into the unreality of the Democrats’ predicament.
The Congressional Budget Office issued a politically explosive report this week, finding that Obamacare will reduce the number of hours Americans work by the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time jobs. This is different from killing 2.5 million jobs, Obamacare defenders are quick to insist. This will be a shortfall on the demand, not supply, side. In other words, people with health insurance will opt not to work in certain circumstances if they know they won’t lose their coverage.
Democrats insist this is a boon. Indeed, many are talking about it as an act of liberation (which reminds me of an eleven-year-old headline from the Onion: “IBM Emancipates 8,000 Wage Slaves”).
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says the CBO report vindicates Obamacare, because “this was one of the goals: to give people life, a healthy life, liberty to pursue their happiness. And that liberty is to not be job-locked, but to follow their passion.” Pelosi is particularly invested in this view. She’s been mocked for years now for her repeated claims that Obamacare is an entrepreneurial bill because it would let Americans quit their jobs to, among other things, “write poetry.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370552/freedom-job-locked-jonah-goldberg
Interesting observations.
More Americans enjoying their “freedom from labor”
COLCHESTER, VT - More job cuts could be coming at IBM in Essex Junction.
02/06/2014 06:21 PM
Alliance@IBM, an organization representing big blue employees, says it’s received internal documents indicating job cuts are on the way at the facilities in Vermont and New York.
“Unfortunately it’s going to impact us again,” Earl Mongeon, a senior process operator at IBM in Essex and vice-president for Alliance@IBM, said.
Mongeon says employees are still reeling from the 419 layoffs from last summer and the recent news of more possible job cuts has people worried again.
“Everybody’s just ‘oh am I gonnna be next? Am I gonna be on the list?” Mongeon said.
The report from Alliance@IBM says the decisions for layoffs were made January 24th and impacted employees would find out February 25th.
“They don’t know and it’s been like that for the last ten years,” Mongeon said.
We asked to see the documents on which the report was based but were denied.
If the layoffs take place the report from Alliance@IBM says state governments in New York and Vermont will be notified about the layoffs the day after they’re slated to happen because of the federal Warn Act. The Warn Act mandates employers notify state governments of layoffs if at least 500 employees are being cut or 33 percent of the workforce is let go.
Disney Layoffs Possible after Anti-Family Company Loses More Money
Posted 5 hours ago by Dave Jolly Filed under Business, Entertainment, Ethics, Family, Homosexuality, Jobs, Liberalism, Marriage
I hate to see anyone being laid off from the job, especially in today’s gloomy economic condition, but I do like to see companies that help destroy the values and morals of America struggle financially.
Disney has always promoted itself as a family friendly company, but they are anything but family friendly. They openly endorse homosexuality and same-sex marriage. They offer benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees. They even have a special day at their theme parks dedicated to homosexuals. It’s as if they changed the lyrics of their theme song ‘It’s a Small World After All’ to ‘It’s a Gay World After All.’
Besides being pro-homosexual, Disney is anti-gun and anti-hunting. They subtly teach their message in their cartoons, movies and other programs. When the Disney classic Bambi was launched in 1942, the reaction of people to deer hunting was enough to force numerous states to stop all deer hunting for several years. Without the annual harvest, deer populations quickly grew to beyond what the land would support in just a couple years hundreds of thousands of deer died of starvation during the winter. In some areas of the nation up to 80% of the deer died because there wasn’t enough food for them all.
http://godfatherpolitics.com/14280/disney-layoffs-possible-anti-family-company-loses-money/
Black Unemployment Rate Jumps To 12.1%…
**********
Can you begin to imagine the intensity of the outcry if a Republican was president and this was happening? The MSM would be demanding answers, if not impeachment.
Thanks for the link.
Looks like Jonah is agreeing with us.
That’s good, too.
I feel this nation and it’s people are under God’s curse. As a Christian, I feel that I now live behind enemy lines. But, the worse things get, the more I realize that it is fruitless to hope in any human solution, but to keep my eyes on Him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.