Job Cuts Top 100,000 in January - Report

Reuters ^ | Tuesday February 3, 2004

[Walkin Man]

Job Cuts Top 100,000 in January - Report Tuesday February 3, 12:50 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Planned job cuts in January were 26 percent higher than in December as U.S. jobs moved to countries like India, China and the Philippines, and as mergers made some jobs redundant, according to a report on Tuesday.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said post-holiday job cuts reached 117,556 in January surpassing the 100,000 threshold for the first time since last October.

Financial markets were on their toes awaiting January's payrolls report to be issued by the Labor Department on Friday after a disappointing December report that showed an increase of only 1,000 jobs.

Analysts had expected 150,000 new jobs to show up in the data, and the worse-than-expected outcome showed that the U.S. economic recovery has yet to produce sustained jobs growth. Economists again expect a figure of 150,000 new jobs in January.

Poor job creation is a headache for President Bush as he seeks re-election in November. The economy -- specifically job creation -- is expected to be a key issue in the campaign. Since Bush took office, more than 2.3 million non-farm jobs have been lost.

According to Challenger, consumer product companies led the January cutbacks with 22,775 job cuts, the largest number of reported job cuts in that sector in a single month since 1993, according to Challenger.

Challenger said one of the main factors for the job cuts in January was an increase of employers eliminating jobs in the United States and shifting to service providers in India, China and the Philippines among other countries.

Another factor was an increase in mergers so far this year. The survey's head, John Challenger, noted in a statement that one of those mergers will result in "as many as 10,000 job cuts to take place as redundant positions are eliminated."

[RaceBannon]

I am not exaggerating the situation, I am relating what it is to people like me.

I am living it, not pontificating it.

I have been out of engineering since June 2001, I have retrained all I can afford, I am so broke I qualified for a FAFSA Grant the last 2 semesters!

I have worked 13 jobs since June 2001, all temp jobs, and during that time, during the 13 jobs, I was also unemployed for over 1 calender year!

You people that keep repeating this stupid mantra that this outsourcing is a good thing are out of your minds! You are cheerleaders standing on the sidelines while having never played the game!

[freeeee]

I guess that when the steam engine was invented alot of transportation jobs disappeared.

That was an entirely different paradigm shift. Technology increased and new jobs replaced old, but with the added benefit of increased production.

No such change is taking place here. Jobs are simply moving from one place to another. There are no new jobs taking the place of the old as they are lost here.

If you can think of jobs that will be created here by globalism (aside from collection agencies) I'd like to hear it.

[Dallas59]

Are foriegn companies coming here to hire Americans?

[waterstraat]

If you keep sending american jobs to asia, you are going to breed civil discontent, political upheaval, and you will have a federal budget and balance of trade deficit.

The "free traders" are asking for trouble, and they will get it.

Bush now has about 6 months left to get those jobs and factories back from asia. I warned him 2 years ago, and he still hasnt done anything.

[RaceBannon]

I guess that when the steam engine was invented alot of transportation jobs disappeared

Non-Sequiter.

The advancement of technologies like that CREATED jobs HERE.

While other countries created their OWN steam engines, WE DID NOT SELL ALL OUR OWN steam engines to these people, and then sell the jobs to create steam engines to those people!!

WE MADE THEM CREATE THEIR OWN steam engine! We are handing away entire technology groups, entire factory floors, entire methods of manufacturing that are too expensive to re-create from scratch here on a startup budget! You didnt work very long in manufacturing if you cant see that, was it your Daddy's Company? Cuz, if it was yours, you would see this happening all around you!

[Walkin Man]

New voters for the Dems, cheap labor to appease big business (e.g. Tyson Foods), courtesy of the Republicans. If you work for wages in this country, you have a target on your back right now.

Exactly! Thats why nether party will lift a finger to stop the invasion on our southern border.

They won't even stop it for the sake of Homeland security.

Keeping the price of lettuce down is apparently worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans to the Rat and Republican party's.

[phil_will1]

"I agree. The more competitive the tax regime the more efficient it is to create jobs. That is a major reason why California and New York have the highest unemployment rates. They also have the highest tax rates.'

Sorry, your point is a little different than mine. Tax relief is great, tax reform is just as great. By taxing corporations, we imbed the cost of our social programs into our manufactured goods at each step in the production chain. Economists have estimated the cost of our current tax system (including our staggering compliance cost burden) to account for 15 - 30% of prices that producers must charge. If we stop taxing income, competition would force down prices and we could ship products out of the country at significantly lower prices. We would then charge a sales tax on personal consumption, which would make US produced goods cost consumers about the same, but imports would be higher. Our exports, on the other hand, would be lower priced than they are now, which will increase the demand for them. In effect, the demand for US produced goods would increase both here in the US, and in foreign markets as well.

Of course, the FairTax would also exert downward pressure on the rates by making the taxes that we pay more visible. That, however, is another post.

[azhenfud]

And I.

I'm seriously doubting Washington's numbers are as accurately reflecting the true economic situations about the country and believe as long as President Bush is so ill-informed and insulated from the real earth, the situations will get worse.

I tried to be optimistic re: the White House, the Senate, the economy, Illegaliens, Phaggotry, CFR, and a host of other ideals seemingly I had in common with this Administration. But you know what? The reality is there is becoming less and less common ground I share with career Republicans.

I talked to my dad re: these things just this past weekend. He said, "Son, if you're not satisfied, change parties - to the Whigs, they more closely represent America today than either the "R" or "D" party". I think I will....

[clamper1797]

You and me both Race ... electrical engineer ... chip designer ... 20 years employed ... then out of work 15 of the last 24 months ... and out since Aug. Down to my last house payment. Yes I'm living it too.

[Nimitz]

"Did I miss anything?"

Yes, you are missing a brain, you pompus jackass.

[philetus]

For a long time, the American consumer was the lifeblood of business. We enjoyed quality products from them and good wages working for them.
The first "made in Taiwan" knock off that was bought by an American consumer, because it was a couple bucks cheaper, is what is causing all the jobs to go away.

Now "made in America" means what? 5% or 10% of the product must be made in the U.S.? Now we have Japanese, Korean, and soon Chinese cars that are "made in America" and American companies, who had pride in their products being "made in America" can't afford to do it any more.

The same Americans, who shortsightedly,

[Alberta's Child]

But you've got it backwards. The biggest symptom of this country's slide into Third World status is not the flight of jobs overseas -- it's the annual ritual of perfectly normal adults sitting around watching a football telecast that is aimed at an audience of adolescents with IQs of 70.

[clamper1797]

Well put ... and accurately as well

[azhenfud]

"You are cheerleaders standing on the sidelines while having never played the game!"

...now if the globalists' livelihoods were also thrown into the ante...

[chimera]

I'm still waiting for someone to actually name one creative destruction-created industry to come out of the offshoring mania to compensate for the lost industries -- besides headhunter for an offshore placement firm, that is.

Someone on a related thread made a comment that he knew someone who started a business identifying likely countries where American business could offshore jobs to. If there are people out there doing that, it reminds me of the one quote by Lenin about how when the time came to hang the last capitalist, he (the capitalist) would sell them the rope. I guess when the time comes to offshore the last globalist's job, he'll identify the country to send it to.

Fairly or not, the Rats are going to kill Bush over this. They're writing the scripts for the campaign commercials as we speak (ominous voice over an image of an unemployment line, people with hollow, worried, lost looks: "Over 2 and a half million jobs lost in four years. How many more in the next four years?..."). It's not fair, to be sure, but that's never stopped Rats before.

[freeeee]

I've heard an Indian programmer earns 1/6 what an American programmer earns.

But American programmers pay more than 1/6 their wages in payroll/ssn/medicare taxes.

Even if American programmers tried to match their Indian competetors wages, after taxes they'd have almost nothing left.

And they'd still have to pay property taxes, sales taxes, etc. and the added cost of government regulation/taxation embedded in every product they buy.

The very government that is allowing jobs to go overseas is the same one taxing the American worker out of the market.

Then they sit there with a strait face and expect you to vote for them. And you know what's the worst part? You will.

[RaceBannon]

I keep getting turned down for the assembler positions, too, and I have 15 years experience doing that, flight test rigs, packaging machines, 5 CAD languages, took 4 programming languages, ...

I test batteries at Duracell! Temp job will end in late Feb or early March, last news is that.

[Nimitz]

I'm living it too. BS in engineering, MBA. Out of work for 22 months....multiple contract positions in between. It's bad. Bush is evil. He's INTENTIONALLY destroying people's lives. He needs to go and be replaced by Rudy. Neither are republicans, but Rudy at least listened to his constituency.

Bush=Rat

[Alberta's Child]

Based on the tone of some of these posts, I get the impression that the only thing President Bush could possibly due to convince you that he's "doing something" would be to blockade every Asian port and cut every telephone/internet connection to Asia.

The U.S. dollar is getting weaker against foreign currencies on almost a daily basis. If the decline in the U.S. dollar doesn't do the trick, then this country's inability to keep these jobs has nothing to do with the lower wages overseas.

[JohnnyZ]

WHAT REUTERS LEFT OUT

• January is ALWAYS a big month for announcements of job cuts.
• This year's cuts are much lower than last January's.

  How do they get away with this garbage?