Free Republic

Morgan Stanley this week cut staff covering short-term credit and regional broker-dealers, after a quarter in which the bank posted a 42 percent drop in bond trading, several sources told Reuters. The sources blamed the shakeup at the No. 6 U.S. bank by assets on tougher capital rules, mounting competition from faster and cheaper trading on electronic systems and expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise U.S. interest rates next week for the first time in nearly a decade. The decision to downsize followed one of Morgan Stanley's slowest quarters for bond trading since the global credit crunch. The bank...

The $15 minimum wage hike in California has sent financially troubled UC Berkeley into decision making mode, and "the people who clean buildings, who work in food services or health clinics,” says Todd Stenhouse, will be the ones without a job. Stenhouse, a spokesman for the American Federation of StateChancellor, also said “There’s a very clear need for those front-line services. But the question is whether there really is a need to hemorrhage resources on executives.” Nicholas Dirks sent a memo to employees Monday informing them of the job reductions and said they will amount to “a modest reduction of...

Sport Chalet announced on Saturday that it is closing all of its stores and has stopped selling goods online. "While our online store is no longer available, all Sport Chalet stores will remain open for several weeks, offering customers the opportunity to use their remaining rewards and gift cards, and to take advantage of great sales," the chain says on its website. Michelle De Leon, a department head at the Sport Chalet in Lake Forest, said employees found out about the store closure through their general managers on Thursday.

Donald Trump played up his plans to tax companies that move jobs out of the United States as he tried to appeal to blue collar workers in a New York rally Sunday. Speaking for about an hour Sunday in Rochester, N.Y., Trump recited statistics about the area's loss of manufacturing jobs and economic hardship in recent years. He reiterated his desire to tax goods sold by companies once based in the United States that moved away to find cheaper labor. The plan has been widely panned by economic experts. But the Rochester crowd ate it up. "I'm the only one...

Tumbling sales of Fiat Chrysler’s main midsize car have driven the company to indefinitely lay off 1,300 employees at a Detroit-area factory. Workers on the second shift at Fiat Chrysler’s assembly plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, will be furloughed starting July 5 as the slow-selling Chrysler 200 has started to stack up on dealer lots. Sales of the cars were down 61 percent through March, and inventory grew to a 150-day supply, according to Ward’s Automotive. Automakers consider 60 days to be optimal to give dealers enough of a selection for customers. Fiat Chrysler sold only 7,500 of the cars...

Hancock Fabrics stores will close its remaining 185 stores nationwide after filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this year. Great American Group, a liquidator, announced it was the highest bidder on the assets and inventory of the fabric retailer, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early February. "Great American Group has worked closely with Hancock Fabrics in a range of capacities over the last several years," Scott Carpenter, of Great American Group, said. "This has given us a deep understanding of Hancock's inventory and assets, which ultimately allowed us to prevail as the highest bidder." On Friday, the stores...

On the day that Digital First Media completed its purchase of Freedom Communications — parent company of the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise — a wave of layoffs hit the Register. Rob Curley, editor of the paper, confirmed Thursday that it would be his last day. He was among 70-plus staff members who were being let go from the editorial, circulation, advertising and marketing departments, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing the Register.

With both ISM Manufacturing and Services employment indices collapsing, endless headlines of layoffs, Challenger-Grey noting Q1 as the worst since 2009, and NFIB small business hiring weak, it is no surprise that initial jobless claims is finally waking up. For the 3rd week in a row - the longest streak since July 2015. The last 3 weeks have seen a 9.1% surge in jobless claims - the biggest such rise since April 2014.  And finally, as Challenger-Grey notes, Through the first quarter of 2016, employers announced 184,920 job cuts, up 31.8 percent from the 140,241 cuts tracked the first three...

Banks are quickly approaching their "automation tipping point," and they could soon reduce headcount by as much as 30%. That's according to a new Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS) report on how financial technology is disrupting banks. "Banks' Uber moment will mean a disintermediation of bank branches rather than the banks themselves," the report said. "Specifically, it will mean the shift to mobile distribution being the main channel of interaction between customers and the bank," the report reads. That means that there will be less need for bank branches, and the people who work inside them. "We believe that...

Is the part-time hiring binge that has inflated job numbers for at least two years about to come to an end? I think so. More importantly, so do CEOs of large corporations. In December, a quarterly survey of large corporation CEOs showed a minuscule net of 1% (35% to 34%) of corporations expected an increase in hiring. 31% expected no change. The latest quarterly survey shows nearly 10% (29% to 38%) of large corporation CEOs expect to reduce headcount. The remaining 33% expect no change.

Hundreds of Chicago factory workers who are fighting to keep their jobs in the US received a visit from Hillary Clinton on Monday, the day before a tightly contested Democratic primary in Illinois. “It is imperative that we do more to keep jobs here, and we do more to attract jobs to places like Chicago, well, really across our country,” Clinton said after the meeting. Last summer, Mondelēz International, the multinational food and beverages group and owner of Nabisco, announced that the company’s factory on Chicago’s South Side would be cutting 600 jobs and transferring production to new facilities in...

New York (AFP) - Struggling cosmetics company Avon Products, Inc. said it was eliminating 2,500 jobs and moving its headquarters to Great Britain, its latest restructuring after selling off its North American business. The changes were expected to cost $60 million before taxes in mostly employee-related charges in the first quarter of 2016, but headcount reduction will result in $30 million in savings this year, the company said in a statement, released on Monday. Savings were expected to reach up to $70 million in 2017. Avon has "significant commercial operations" in Great Britain and the move would happen "over time,"...

Science! (Is economics really a science? I’ve long felt it should be taught alongside astrology or some related field.) In any event, the continent sized Petri dish which is the American jobs market has been the subject of much speculation since the Fight for Fifteen muscled its way into the presidential campaign debate. It’s a very populist position which the Democrats have been riding like rocket. At the same time, people who actually study such matters have been warning that it would backfire spectacularly, particularly if it was implemented in a rush. Job availability is subject to the same...

Ohio lost 112,500 jobs in 2015 resulting from the United States' trade deficit with countries that are part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. That places Ohio sixth, in terms of the percentage of jobs lost to trade with TPP countries, among the 50 states and the District of Columbia ranked in the report released Thursday by the liberal Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The lost jobs represent nearly 2.2 percent of employment in Ohio, according to the analysis. The total number of lost jobs includes those directly and indirectly impacted by the...

Are we be better off today with the thousands of U.S. factories that have shut down and millions of American jobs lost and the trillions in accumulated debt that we've run up in the last couple decades of free trade? And, of course, this is due to many factors including such things as: Big government Regulations High taxes Unions driving up costs Cheap labor overseas Fewer regulations overseas Lower taxes overseas Trade deficits etc., And doubly exasperated by poor trade deals? Or is this all a myth? Are we better off with cheaper foreign (cheap) goods, fewer U.S. factories, fewer...

Jobs to be bundled on a plane and flown to lower labour cost countries ... He highlighted a $1bn Japanese tax gain Big Blue has received, and pointed out that in the past the company had matched the proceeds from dispositions or IP sales with workforce restructuring expense.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is cutting jobs in its global banking and markets business on Tuesday. The job cuts have already taken place in Asia, and they are working their way across time zones to Europe and now the US, according to people familiar with the matter. Arnaud Droitcourt, head of equity trading in Asia Pacific, and Robert Grillo, head of fixed income e-sales, are among those to have left, according to Bloomberg. A spokesman for Bank of America declined to comment. Business Insider reported last month that the bank had asked senior executives some weeks ago to draw...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Ohio lost 112,500 jobs in 2015 resulting from the United States' trade deficit with countries that are part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. That places Ohio sixth, in terms of the percentage of jobs lost to trade with TPP countries, among the 50 states and the District of Columbia ranked in the report released Thursday by the liberal Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The lost jobs represent nearly 2.2 percent of employment in Ohio, according to the analysis. The total number of lost jobs includes those directly and indirectly impacted...

The line-up for Donald Trump’s Sunday rally in Alabama includes victims of the immigration and guest-worker policies favored by Sen. Marco Rubio. The speakers include two of Rubio’s constituents who were victims of the H-1B outsourcing program, as well as Chris Crane, president of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council. This rally comes on the heels of a bombshell New York Times report documenting how Rupert Murdoch and Fox News colluded with Rubio to minimize public opposition to the passage of Rubio’s amnesty and guest-worker expansion bill that was backed by President Barack Obama...

1/3 of South Carolina's Manufacturing Jobs Have Disappeared Since NAFTA AP Photo/Paul SancyaAP Photo/Paul Sancya by JULIA HAHN 19 Feb 2016 919 At a CNN town hall Thursday, businessman and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump once again put the issue of manufacturing front and center in the 2016 race. When CNN's Anderson Cooper pressed Trump on whether a U.S. president ought to be sending cease and desist letters and whether he would continue to do so as president, Trump said, "maybe to China" -- pointing out the extraordinary job losses Americans have experienced through trade policies: No... I would be...