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J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has begun layoffs that are expected to total more than 5,000 by next year, people familiar with the matter said. This latest phase of cuts started earlier this year and would eliminate at least 2% of the bank’s JPM, workforce over the next year. The moves come as the nation’s largest bank overhauls its 5,570 branches to rely more on technology and less on human tellers. Chairman and Chief Executive James Dimon said Wednesday that the average J.P. Morgan Chase branch would lose one employee over the next two years, mostly through attrition....

The PennySaver, an advertising newsletter that was a fixture in Southern California mailboxes for decades, is going out of business. Employees said they were told late Friday that the company was ceasing operations immediately, without warning or further explanation. “They said, ‘That’s it. We’re done. We’re closing. Everybody pack up your things and leave,'” said one employee, who asked that her name not be published because she was unauthorized by the company to talk to the news media. [Snip] On its website, OpenGate said the PennySaver is the largest direct mail shopping publication in the United States, reaching 11 million...

Unilever plans to move production of vegetable oil and margarine spreads from Baltimore to Kansas beginning at the end of the month, shutting its Baltimore plant and laying off 137 workers. The consumer goods giant plans to shift operations from its Southwest Avenue factory to Olathe, Kansas, where it performs similar work and embarked on a $152.5 million expansion in 2013. Unilever informed Maryland regulators of the layoffs, which begin this month, in a notice last month, as required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The plant is slated to close by the end of September. The Southwest...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Appalachian coal mining suffered a double blow on Friday, as Murray Energy announced plans to lay off more than 1,800 miners, most from West Virginia, and Alpha Natural Resources told 439 more Mountain State miners they could be out of work. The announcements continue a grim employment trend for the Appalachian coalfields. On Friday, St. Clairsville, Ohio-based Murray Energy said it told 1,417 workers at five West Virginia mines that their jobs must be eliminated....

BRISTOL, Va. -- Alpha Natural Resources announced this afternoon that it's idling the mining and processing operations at Rockspring Development Camp Creek underground mine in Wayne County, West Virginia, which will mean the loss of 439 jobs. Employees were notified today about the idling "based on the mine operator's current assessment of market conditions,"according to a news release issued by Alpha Natural Resources. Last week, three other Alpha-affiliated mine operators announced reductions in work force "due to sustained weak market conditions and government regulations that have challenged the entire central Appalachian coal industry. A total of 71 employees were affected...

Approximately 1,400 employees to be furloughed -- 37 percent of Blue Bell workforceBlue Bell Creameries says they'll be laying off a third of their workforce due to the extended timeline to return to production after a listeria outbreak forced the company to recall all products and close its plants. "Due to the extended timeline required to ensure the highest quality and safety of Blue Bell’s products when the company resumes production, and because supply and distribution will be limited for some time to come," Blue Bell Creameries CEO and President Paul Kruse said in a news release Friday. Kruse announced,...

Zenith Education Group, a Minnesota-based provider of career-school training and operator of Everest College campuses in metro Denver, is laying off 131 people at its Thornton call center. "We had a reduction in the student population and we are merging some call centers to the one located in Tampa," said Zenith spokesperson Krissy Humenesky, referring to a call center at an Everest college in Florida. Zenith, an affiliate of ECMC Group Inc., last December entered into a deal with Corinthian Colleges to take over 56 Everest and WyoTech campuses in 17 states across the country, including Colorado. Earlier this month,...

You’ll never hear the Obama administration pass on an opportunity to gloat about the miracles they think they’ve managed to pull off over the past seven years to get America’s economy back on track. The only problem with that is, it’s not remotely true. Somehow, the spin doctors at the White House always manage to cherry pick rare instances of economic improvement and turn them into something much bigger. If you want a real indication of how President Barack Obama’s economy is fairing, just look to a recent report that shows a coming “retail apocalypse,” with major retailers across the...

The paradoxical, utterly nonsensical "data" releases continue. On one hand, the government's Department of Labor reported earlier today that in the past week just 265K people were laid off: the lowest number since early 2000. On the other, private data aggregator Challenger reported that in April, there were a whopping 61,582 job cuts, a 68% surge from March, and up 53% from a year ago. This was the highest monthly total since May 2012 and the highest April total since 2009!Smoothing out the noise reveals that in the first 4 months of 2015, employers announced 201,796 planned job cuts,...

Initial jobless claims rose slightly last week from a 15-year low while planned layoffs surged in April to a three-year high, providing mixed signals about the health of the labor market ahead of Friday's jobs report. About 265,000 people applied for first time unemployment benefits in the week ended Saturday, up from the previous week's 262,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists had expected claims to rise to 280,000 after hitting the lowest level since 2000 the previous week. The four-week average, which smooths out some volatility, fell to 279,500 last week. That was the lowest level since May 2000....

If you're going to run for president, buy every website domain with your name. On Monday morning, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced she's running for U.S. president. But if you head to CarlyFiorina.org, you'll find a message that criticizes her for firing tens of thousands of workers at HP (HPCQ). It shows 30,000 sad faces -- one for every employee that was laid off while Fiorina was chief executive from 1999 to 2005. The accusation that she outsourced so many American jobs is a major thorn in Fiorina's side -- and one reason she lost her bid for U.S....

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, If the U.S. economy really is improving, then why are big U.S. retailers permanently shutting down thousands of stores? The “retail apocalypse” that I have written about so frequently appears to be accelerating. As you will see below, major U.S. retailers have announced that they are closing more than 6,000 locations, but economic conditions in this country are still fairly stable. So if this is happening already, what are things going to look like once the next recession strikes? For a long time, I have been pointing to 2015 as a...

GRIN clink on link http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/media/new-york-times-company-q1-earnings.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

TOLEDO, OH (Toledo News Now) - Toledo Free Press Publisher Tom Pounds says the paper will be shutting down operations. Pounds says financial troubles are the reason he's closing the paper. “When you can't pay your bills, you don't keep going,” Pounds said Monday. Pounds says about 50 families in total will be impacted by the decision to cease publication. That includes 10 full-time employees, as well as writers, paper carriers, artists and others who worked on the Free Press's weekly issues. Even as he announced the decision to shut down, Pounds said he's proud of what the Free Press...

Bell Helicopter announced today that it will lay off 1,100 employees. The Fort Worth-based helicopter company has a location on Pont Des Mouton Road in Lafayette, according to the company's website. The company did not release specifics on which locations will see layoffs, but the communications director did say in a news release that the reduction in workforce will apply to all areas of the business, both management and non-management, and covered and non-covered workers. In addition to its Pont Des Mouton location, Bell Helicopter broke ground in August last year on an 82,300-square-foot aircraft assembly center near the Lafayette...

From crime to labor issues to an intricate military coup of the entire United States, conspiracy theories are flying around the closed Wal-Mart supercenters in Tulsa and elsewhere. The official reason for the sudden closure of the store at Admiral Place and Memorial Drive last week was two years of plumbing issues that would take six months to fix. That was the same reason given for each of the four other Wal-Mart locations, which all closed at the same time with just a few hours’ notice. The other stores are in Brandon, Florida; Pico Rivera, California; Midland, Texas; and Livingston,...

Wall Street's six biggest banks have cut nearly 80,000 jobs over the past 5 years, according to Bloomberg. The majority of the cuts have come from Bank of America. That's over both the past 5 years and the past 12 months, as well as in the first quarter of 2015. Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley added jobs in the first quarter of 2015, but 4,000 jobs were still cut across Wall Street last quarter. Bloomberg looked at data from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America. Over the past 5 years, JPMorgan has...

Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield service provider, said it plans to cut its global workforce by another 11,000 jobs over coming months. Schlumberger has slashed its worldwide workforce by 15 percent total. The company, which has headquarters in Houston, Paris and Hague, announced its plans last week, part of sweeping layoffs across the oilfield service industry as drilling rig counts in North American plummet amid low oil prices. Competitors Halliburton and Baker Hughes have also announced layoffs. Schlumberger, which employed 126,000 worldwide at the height of oil prices last summer, did not provide specifics as to where layoffs would occur...

In a move that once again isn't exactly shocking, Halliburton Co. has been engaging in much more serious layoffs than they initially planned on back in February. Back in the early part of the year -- when energy analysts were confidently predicting oil prices would rebound in no time at all -- Halliburton still battened down the hatches, announcing plans for about 6,500 layoffs. Since then the analysts have for the most part gotten increasingly dour with their predictions, oil prices have stayed around $50 a barrel and Halliburton has actually laid off about 10 percent of its workforce in...

Baker Hughes Inc., one of the world's largest oil and gas service companies, said it will increase job cuts worldwide to 10,500, or about 17 percent of its total workforce. The Houston-based company said the cuts are necessary in order to weather a crash in North American drilling prompted by low oil prices. Baker Hughes announced the additional cuts Tuesday (April 21) after reporting a $32 million loss for the first quarter this year. The company's first-quarter revenue was down 20 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Earlier this year, Baker Hughes said it planned to cut...