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Jobs lost
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Jobs lost Glad I am self-employed and cannot be fired or laid off! the economy slides deeper into recession with the job cuts. I hope we will revive by the end of 2009, but things don't look good now... The sheer scale of the global down-turn was brought home yesterday with the announcement of more than 70,000 job cuts across the world. In one of the darkest days since the credit crunch started, more than 4,000 posts in Britain were axed, with Corus, the UK’s largest steelmaker, alone cutting 2,500 staff. At ING, the Dutch banking and insurance group, 1,600 British workers were waiting to hear their fate while another Dutch company ‒ Philips, the electronics company ‒ announced 6,000 job cuts. It has 2,500 workers in the UK. In America five leading US companies sacked a total of more than 45,000 workers. The global job losses represent yet more evidence that the financial crisis that erupted on Wall Street two years ago has now infected the whole of the corporate world, engulfing industries ranging from healthcare to heavy equipment manufacturers. Some companies are taking extreme measures to avoid job cuts. Virgin Atlantic introduced a pay freeze at all levels yesterday and many companies have already introduced shorter working weeks and cuts in hours. The cuts edged the economy closer to forecasts that unemployment will reach three million by Christmas in the UK. Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, said: “If you’re getting this number of job losses in one day that gives us some indication of the scale of the problem we could be facing over the course of the coming months. Unemployment lags behind the economy ‒ it will peak after the economy starts to improve.” Ulster Bank, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland, announced plans to cut 750 staff throughout Ireland, representing 10 per cent of its workforce. Caterpillar, one of the world’s biggest truck makers, cut its workforce by 20,000; Pfizer, the drugs group, said it was slashing 8,000 positions; Texas Instruments is shedding 3,400 staff; Home Depot, the do-it-yourself chain, laid off 7,000 workers; General Motors made another 2,000 employees redundant; and Sprint Nextel sacked 8,000, 14 percent of its workers. About 7.2 per cent of the American workforce is now out of a job ‒ representing about 11.1 million people ‒ and the rate is expected to hit 10 per cent by the end of this year. |
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