“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”