May 13, 2010 at 12:17 p.m.
Filed under:
Economy,
Jobs/employment,
Layoffs
Erik Proulx, a former advertising copywriter, is seen on the roof of an office building where he maintains an office in Boston. Proulx says he no longer wants to rejoin an industry he thinks will continue to struggle. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Associated Press | Fewer construction workers will be needed.
Don’t expect as many interior designers or advertising copywriters, either. Retailers will get by with leaner staffs. The economy is strengthening. But millions of jobs lost in the recession could be gone for good.
And unlike in past recessions, jobs in the beleaguered manufacturing sector aren’t the only ones likely lost forever. What sets the Great Recession apart is the variety of jobs that may not return.
That helps explain why economists think it will take at least five years for the economy to regain the 8.2 million jobs wiped out by the recession — longer than in any other recovery since World War II.
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May 13, 2010 at 9:47 a.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Associated Press | New claims for unemployment benefits dipped for the fourth straight
week, a sign the job market is improving at a slow but steady pace. Employers, encouraged by a recovering economy, are hiring
again. But they are not doing it at the level needed to reduce the
jobless rate.
The Labor Department said Thursday
that initial claims dropped last week by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted
444,000. That’s slightly above analysts’ estimates, according to Thomson
Reuters. The previous week’s total was revised up to 448,000.
Get the full story: New claims for unemployment benefits drop.
May 12, 2010 at 5:53 p.m.
Filed under:
China,
International,
Jobs/employment,
Labor,
M&A
From Reuters | Jim Owens, the chairman and chief executive of Caterpillar, warned against regulations that might prevent Chinese and
other overseas companies from buying U.S. businesses. Owens said on Wednesday that efforts to discourage cross-border deals, like China National Offshore Oil Corp’s derailed effort to take over U.S. oil firm Unocal Oil back in 2005, made it more difficult for U.S. companies to invest in overseas markets.
Get the full story: reuters.com.
By Bruce Japsen | The looming decline in sales from the blockbuster diabetes drug Actos
figured into Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s decision Wednesday to slash
nearly 1,600 U.S. jobs — including hundreds in Chicago’s northern
suburbs.
Japan’s largest drug maker operates from its U.S. base in Deerfield
under the name Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America Inc. It faces
competition in the next two years from upcoming generic versions of its
flagship product, the diabetes prescription Actos.
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May 12, 2010 at 4:13 p.m.
Filed under:
Food,
Jobs/employment,
Manufacturing
From Plastics News | Lake Forest-based manufacturer Solo Cup plans to close some of its manufacturing facilities in the U.S. by the second quarter of 2012. Solo Cup didn’t specify which sites would close, but said the
project “to further optimize our manufacturing footprint” would cost
between $113 million and $133 million.
Get the full story: plasticsnews.com.
May 12, 2010 at 10:19 a.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment,
Technology
Tribune staff | Hiring demand for information technology professionals in Illinois was up 27 percent in April from a year earlier, as companies were seeking almost 7,600 workers, according to Wanted Technologies, a company that tracks job postings.
Where are there the most IT jobs this spring? It’s in New York City, where April IT job postings were up 74 percent from a year earlier, twice that of California’s growth rate.
Get the full story »
May 11, 2010 at 12:43 p.m.
Filed under:
Autos,
Jobs/employment
Associated Press | Chrysler Group LLC says it will rehire 379
laid-off workers and hire 20 new supervisors to build transmissions at
its operations in Kokomo, Ind. The company said Tuesday that it will invest $43 million in equipment
to expand the Kokomo operations, which include casting and transmission
plants.
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May 11, 2010 at 12:32 p.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment
Associated Press | New hiring rose in March to its highest level
in more than a year while job openings moved up slightly, signs the job
market is slowly improving. The Labor Department said Tuesday that
employers hired 4.24 million people in March, up from 4 million the
previous month. Job openings edged up by 47,000 to 2.69 million.
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May 11, 2010 at 6:33 a.m.
Filed under:
Layoffs
From the Chicago Sun-Times | CNA Financial said it plans to lay off 320 of its 750-employee IT department during the next 90 days. Playboy said it also plans an unspecified number of layoffs.
Get the full story: suntimes.com.
May 10, 2010 at 1:47 p.m.
Filed under:
Food,
International,
Jobs/employment
From BBC News | Northfield-based Kraft Foods, which now owns chocolate maker Cadbury, has announced plans to close its headquarters in Britain. The US company said it would move workers from its office in the town of Cheltenham to Cadbury’s current headquarters in Uxbridge, and to Cadbury offices in Bournville. Bournville, which is the historical home of Cadbury, will become a center for research and development. Kraft did not say whether the plans would include job losses.
Get the full story: bbc.com.
May 10, 2010 at 11:46 a.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment
By Sandra M. Jones |
If you dodged the pink slip only to find yourself taking on the work
your colleagues left behind, you aren’t alone.
Eight out of 10 employees report their workloads increased as a result
of company layoffs, according to a survey released Monday from Right
Management, the consulting arm of Manpower Inc. Fifty-seven percent of
workers describe their workloads as having grown “a lot.”
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May 7, 2010 at 8:05 a.m.
Filed under:
Economy,
Jobs/employment
Dollar General store recruiters at a job fair in Florida in April. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
By Don Lee | More confident employers stepped up job creation in April, expanding
payrolls by 290,000, the most in four years. The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as people streamed back into the market looking for work.
The hiring of 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census helped overall payroll growth last month. However, private employers — the backbone of the economy — boosted jobs, too. They added a surprisingly strong 231,000 positions last month, also the most since March 2006, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent in March to 9.9 percent in April, mainly because 805,000 job seekers — perhaps feeling better about their prospects — resumed their searches for work.
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May 7, 2010 at 7:25 a.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment,
Layoffs
Associated Press | OfficeMax plans to close its Casper call
center and terminate the facility’s 250 employees. The Naperville-based
company’s three other call centers — in Bristol, Va., Peru, Ill., and
Ottawa, Ill. — will remain open.
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May 6, 2010 at 8:12 a.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment,
Layoffs
By Julie Wernau | A dozen Chicago-area businesses have given notice to the state that
layoffs are planned, affecting more than 920 workers.
Sears Holding Corp., Unilever, Reed Business Information, Continental
Casualty Co., Material Sciences Corp., Navistar Financial Corp. and
Regional Elite Airline Services LLC at Midway Airport, notified Illinois
in April of the impending layoffs as required by the Worker Adjustment
and Retraining Notification Act.
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May 3, 2010 at 7:44 a.m.
Filed under:
Conventions,
Jobs/employment,
Pharmaceuticals
By Bruce Japsen | Good news on the biotech front: The biotechnology industry grew, despite soaring unemployment and thousands of jobs shed by pharmaceutical companies during the recession, according to a report presented in Chicago this morning from the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
The U.S. bioscience sector grew 1.4 percent to 1.42 million jobs in 2008, the latest year statistics were available, said the report by research firm Battelle. Meanwhile, the larger unemployment picture was dismal, with nearly one in 10 Americans without jobs.
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