Source: CNN Money
Employers made their deepest cut in staffing in almost five years in February, the Labor Department reported Friday. There was a net loss of 63,000 jobs, which is the biggest decline since March 2003 and weaker than the revised 22,000 jobs lost in January. Economists had forecast a gain of 25,000 jobs.

The weak report fueled already mounting recession fears and is likely to keep the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates further when it meets later this month. “Based on today’s Employment Report, if we are not in a recession, it is a darned good imitation of one,” said Kevin Giddis, managing director of fixed income at Morgan Keegan. “We are in an unprecedented real estate and credit crisis that is whipping its way through the U.S. economy like a Midwestern tornado.”

Job losses were widespread, reaching beyond the battered construction sector, which lost 39,000, and manufacturing, where job losses hit 52,000. Retailers cut 34,000 jobs. Temporary staffing firms cut nearly 28,000 from their payrolls, another warning sign of employers pulling back. Hotels cut about 4,000 jobs, a sign that discretionary consumer spending could be on the wane. Overall the private sector cut 101,000 jobs, with only a gain in government employment limiting losses.

The following is a video from the law firm Cohen & Grigsby who teach employers how to hire foreigners via the H1B instead of US citizens. A great way to reduce labor cost and a wonderful way for corporations to make more money, at the expense –and over the backs — of, citizens. The second video is from CNN’s Lou Dobbs, one of the few people left in the media who tells it as it is.

Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a “shortage of skilled U.S. workers.” Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Source: AC
Word has it that there may be plans yet again to “outsource” highly skilled American jobs to other countries. Approximately 40-million American jobs could be at stake and yet U.S workers have not been told or consulted about it, until now. Just to put the number of 40-million into perspective, that is more than twice the amount of people that are employed in a manufacturing job.

According to Alan Blinder, an economist from Princeton University, the “choice” jobs of skilled Americans could be lost and given to foreign countries within the next decade or two. Some jobs that are up for grabs include computer programming, graphic design, and bookkeeping, along with several others that were once considered “skilled American jobs”.

Apparently Blinder was sitting in at the business summit in Davos, Switzerland when he heard some executives from the U.S talking about outsourcing. They were very enthralled in the fact that they could outsource so many professional jobs to lower-wage countries. [more]

Source: Press Esc
US citizens who apply for a job will need prior approval from Department of Homeland Security under the terms immigration bill passed by the Senate this week. American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that the DHS’s Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) is error plagued and if the department makes a mistake in determining work eligibility, there will be virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages due to the bill’s prohibitions on judicial review.

Even current employees will need to obtain eligibility approval from the DHS Within 60 days of the Immigration Reform Act of 2006 becoming law. “EEVS would be a financial and bureaucratic nightmare for both businesses and workers,” said Timothy Sparapani, ACLU Legislative Counsel. “Under this already flawed program no one would be able to work in the U.S. without DHS approval - creating a ‘No Work List’ similar to the government’s ‘No Fly List.’ We need immigration reform, but not at this cost.”

The act allocates US$400 million for the implementation of the EEVS, but the Congressional Budgeting Office estimates the system to cost in excess of a billion dollars.

Source: Seattle Times
The master plan, it seems, is to move perhaps 40 million high-skill American jobs to other countries. U.S. workers have not been consulted.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder predicts that these choice jobs could be lost in a mere decade or two. We speak of computer programming, bookkeeping, graphic design and other careers once thought firmly planted in American soil. For perspective, 40 million is more than twice the total number of people now employed in manufacturing. Blinder was taken aback when, sitting in at the business summit in Davos, Switzerland, he heard U.S. executives talk enthusiastically about all the professional jobs they could outsource to lower-wage countries. And he’s a free trader.

What America can do to stop this is unclear, but it certainly doesn’t have to speed up the process through a government program. We refer to the H-1B visa program, which allows educated foreigners to work in the United States, usually for three years. Many in Congress want to nearly double the number of H-1B visas, to 115,000 a year. To the extent that the program helps talented foreign graduates of U.S. universities stay in this country while they await their green cards, it performs a useful service. But for many companies, the visa has become just a tool for transferring American jobs offshore.

Ron Hira has studied the dark side of the H-1B program. A professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he notes that the top applicants for visas are outsourcing companies, such as Wipro Technologies of India and Bermuda-based Accenture. The companies bring recruits in from, say, India to learn about American business. After three years here, the workers go home better able to interact with their U.S. customers. In other cases, companies ask their U.S. employees to train H-1B workers who then replace them at lower pay. “This is euphemistically called, ‘knowledge transfer,’ “ Hira says. “I call it, ‘knowledge extraction.’ “

Another rap against the program is that it’s used to depress the wages of American workers. The program’s defenders argue that the law requires companies to pay “the prevailing wage.” But “prevailing wage” is a legalism, Hira says. It does not translate into “market wage.” The median pay for H-1B computing professionals in fiscal 2005 was $50,000, which means half earn less than that. An American information-technology worker with a bachelor’s degree makes more than $50,000 in an entry-level job. Businesses bemoan the alleged shortage of Americans trained to do the work. But wait a second — the law of supply and demand states that a shortage of something causes its price to rise. Wages in information technology have been flat. The companies fret that not enough young Americans are studying science and technology. Well, cutting the pay in those fields isn’t much of an incentive, is it? The threat that they will outsource if they can’t bring in foreign temps is a hollow one. “There’s nothing stopping those companies from working offshore anyway,” Hira says. “They’re not patriotic.”

This vision for a competitive America seems to be a few rich U.S. executives commandeering armies of foreign workers. They don’t have to train their domestic workforce. They don’t have to raise pay to American standards. A provision for revving up the H-1B program is contained in the immigration bill that last year passed the Senate. The co-sponsors, Democrat Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Republican John McCain of Arizona, have contended that their legislation requires employers to search for U.S. workers first. It does not. Skilled U.S. workers had better start looking out for their interests. No one else is.

Source: Bloomberg
Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. electronics retailer, will fire 3400 of its highest-paid sales people and hire replacements willing to work for less. Those who were fired can apply for the lower-paying jobs, company spokesman Bill Cimino said today. Sales may be volatile during the first half of this year as the new sales people transition in, the company said today in a statement.

“Firing 3400 of arguably the most successful sales people in the company could prove terrible for morale,” Colin McGranahan, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Co., wrote in a note today. “The question remains as to whether Circuit City can rebuild in time for the all-important holiday season.” The company also will eliminate another 130 jobs after hiring IBM to manage some of its computer operations. About 50 Circuit City workers will transfer to IBM. The sales people being fired weren’t given an option of taking a pay cut, spokesman Cimino said. He declined to give the pay rate for fired workers or the expected wages for new hires.

The job cuts will be “a challenge for Circuit City,” said Rick Weinhart, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets Corp. in New York. “These are all fresh faces coming in and certainly they’re less experienced, so I’m guessing it’s not going to be a one- or two-quarter challenge. There’s going to be a learning curve.” Circuit City pays about $10 to $11 an hour, on average, Weinhart estimated. Entry level pay probably is close to $8 for inexperienced workers, he said.

Source: All Headline News by Megan Shannon
(AHN) - Industry experts expect Chrysler to cut 10,000 jobs and close two assembly lines after the losses and sale declines that plagued its competitors finally caught up to the company.

Last year the company was bumped from its spot as number three automaker in the US. It now remains at number four behind Toyota. The company will detail its plans for the future on Valentines Day. Chrysler fell victim to slumping truck and sports utility vehicle sales as well as high labor costs. Now experts say they will have to lose 20 percent of their employees to make up for its loses. Some experts say DaimlerChrysler should sell Chrysler all together.

John Casesa, managing partner of consulting firm Casesa Strategic Advisors said, “DaimlerChrysler faces a decision. It either needs to much more aggressively integrate Chrysler and Mercedes or separate the business. The management has a fundamental decision at hand. I think it’s still an open question.”

Source: CNet News
Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini is expected to announce a massive layoff as soon as Tuesday that could eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs, CNET News.com has learned.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker, having suffered several financially disappointing quarters, launched an internal analysis in April to find ways to increase its efficiency. Otellini is scheduled to announce the results of the analysis, including the layoff, on Tuesday after the stock market closes, sources familiar with the plans said.

Intel has about 100,000 employees worldwide, so the cut could be as high as 10 percent of the company’s staff.

The job cut is likely to weigh particularly heavily on marketing staff. Intel studies comparing its own staffing levels to competitors’ concluded that the ratio of marketing personnel to salespeople was too large, the sources said. The expected cuts won’t be the first big change in sales and marketing. That group previously was led jointly by Eric Kim and Anand Chandrasekher, but in July they moved to different roles and Sean Maloney was appointed sole leader.

Intel declined to comment on the layoff plan. The company has committed to announcing the analysis results by the end of September, spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, but added, “We have not communicated publicly what the plans are with respect to that.” Most companies would love to have Intel’s financial results–for example, the $885 million in net income and $8 billion in revenue the company reported for the second quarter. But compared with the year earlier, that net income figure was a 57 percent drop and the revenue a 13 percent drop. And Intel has had to warn of lowered financial results.

Part of the problem: The chipmaker has lost share to rival Advanced Micro Devices, in particular in the server market where chips are sold at higher prices. AMD rose from having no server products three years ago to claim 26 percent of the x86 server processor market in the second quarter, according to Mercury Research. AMD now sells chips to all of the four major server makers. Intel hopes to reclaim its share with new Xeon server chips such as Woodcrest and Tulsa. It’s also been fighting back with competitive Core processors for personal computers, aggressive chip prices, and plans for quickly introducing new technology.

The efficiency plan already has wrought major changes at Intel:

• The company reshuffled of top executive ranks in July, giving new jobs to most of those who reported directly to Otellini.
• It laid off 1,000 managers earlier in July, saying the move would speed decision-making.
• It sold its Xscale communications and applications chip business to Marvell Technology Group in June, reducing its work force by 1,400 positions.
• It sold part of its telecommunications business to Eicon Networks in August, trimming another 600 jobs.

Source: Yahoo News
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media sector surged 88 percent last year and that trend will likely continue as readers shift from print to online services, a study on Thursday showed.

For all of last year, the media industry announced 17,809 job cuts, up sizably from the 9,453 cuts announced the prior year, according to the job outplacement tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

That was the biggest tally of announced layoffs for the industry since 2001, when the dot.com collapse was under way. The trend is expected to continue this year, according to John Challenger, chief executive officer at the Chicago-based firm, which tracks planned layoffs, not actual layoffs.

“Already this year we have seen job cuts announced by Time Inc and the New York Times Company,” Challenger said. “These organizations will continue to make adjustments as their focus shifts from print to electronic.”

For the first half of this month, there have been more than 2,000 planned job cuts announced. However, in terms of total job cuts, the downsizing in the media sector pales in comparison to the auto industry, which saw 158,766 job cuts in 2006.

Still, newspaper publishers, broadcasters and other media companies have been cutting jobs and reevaluating their business models as a growing number of Americans turn to the Internet for news and entertainment.

Since the beginning of 2007, top U.S. magazine publisher Time Inc. said it would cut 289 jobs, the New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT - news) announced plans to shed 125 jobs and close foreign bureaus for its Boston Globe newspaper.

But print media is not alone in the changes. NBC Universal, home to the NBC television network and Universal Studios film unit, announced late last year a $750 million overhaul that includes cutting nearly 700 jobs to invest in its faster growing digital operations. NBC is controlled by General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE - news)

“Until they can figure out a way to make as much money from their online services as they are losing from the print side, it is going to be an uphill battle,” said Challenger of planned cuts across the media sector. Internet companies also are not immune to the changes. Time Warner Inc’s (NYSE:TWX - news) AOL Internet unit is in the midst of cutting 5,000 jobs, or 26 percent of its workforce, as it shifts its business to a model based on Web advertising.

As readers spend more time on the Web, advertisers are not far behind in moving their marketing budgets online. While most companies in the industry are building up their Internet sites and distribution to capture the growth, that has yet to offset weakness at their mainstay print or broadcast businesses. Internet ad spending is forecast to rise 13 percent in 2007, while network television advertising is seen almost flat from a year ago and newspaper advertising is expected to drop nearly 3 percent, according to media tracking firm TNS.

Not only are newspapers vying with other news organizations for audience share, they are competing with bloggers, industry experts and gossip sites, Challenger said. “This dilutes their audience and dilutes the amount of money they can charge advertisers, which currently is the primary source of revenue for online news sites, since most are not charging subscriber fees to access their content,” Challenger said.