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Sears Holdings Corp. will close another 78 stores — 68 Kmart units, and 10 Sears stores — as it looks to restore profitability. That accounts for about 5 percent of its store base, which is nearly 1,700 stores. The ailing company, based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, had said in February that it would accelerate the closing of unprofitable stores following a “challenging” holiday season. The move announced Thursday is expected to generate a “meaningful level” of cash from the liquidation of store inventories and from the sale or sublease of some of the related real estate, it said Thursday. All...

U.S. solar energy company SunEdison Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, becoming one of the largest non-financial companies to do so in the past 10 years. Once the fastest-growing U.S. renewable energy developer, SunEdison embarked on an aggressive acquisition strategy that left it struggling with $12 billion in debt. In its bankruptcy filing, the company said it had assets of $20.7 billion and liabilities of $16.1 billion as of Sept. 30. Although solar project developers such as SunEdison continue to benefit from robust demand, their shares have been hit by investor concerns that demand could fall in...

“Governor Pence was pleased to welcome Mr. Trump back to Indiana and hear firsthand his plans for the country. The Governor was also grateful for the opportunity to describe Indiana's economic success and expressed his desire to have a partner in the White House who will help advance pro-growth economic policies, reduce burdensome regulation and curb the size and scope of government. With more than 130,000 new private sector jobs created since he took office, Governor Pence believes addressing these issues is critical in order for Indiana to continue to be a great place to live, work and raise a...

A little while back we told you about how the CEO of Hardees/Carl’s Jr. was thinking about replacing employees with machines thanks to the ridiculous minimum wage hike to $15.Well, it appears he has done it.It was only a matter of time before this started to happen and you can expect to see more of this in the future.

The ripples from California’s recent passage of a $15 per hour minimum wage continue to spread across the employment pond. We’ve already seen how it will hit the food service and hotel industries, but one of the most ironic examples of the law of unintended but perfectly predictable consequences may wind up coming from the University of California at Berkeley. With a hat tip to Legal Insurrection, we find that the traditional hotbed for Social Justice Warrior protests – including the Fight for 15 crowd – is going to be feeling the pinch in short order. And it won’t...

One of the top users of foreign workers imported via the H-1B visa program announced Tuesday it’s laying off about ten percent of its global workforce.Tech giant Intel is laying off some 12,000 workers, although it’s one of the country’s 15 largest users of H-1Bs, which are temporary visas that allow companies to hire foreign workers for American tech jobs. The big-time layoffs come even as the company has called for hikes in the number of foreign workers it is able to hire using H-1B visas.The chip-making giant said the mass firings are part of a “restructuring initiative” that will further its shift away from the PC...

Intel plans to cut 12,000 jobs, or 11% of its workforce. It will take a $1.2 billion charge as a result. Trading was halted around the release, then the stock immediately dropped when trading resumed. It's down about 3%. But Intel beat on earnings and revenue. Here are the reported numbers for Q1 2016: • EPS (non-GAAP): $0.54 vs. $0.49 expected. That's up 2% from last year. • Revenue: $13.80 billion vs. $13.84 billion expected. But that number includes $99 million from a deferred revenue write-down — without that, revenue would've come in at $13.70 billion. That's still a 7%...

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...