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Businesses United States Technology

The US Just Had the Most Q1 Layoffs in a Decade (axios.com) 239

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The U.S. saw its highest level of layoffs in a first quarter since 2009, data from staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released this week showed. From a report: Employers cut 190,410 jobs in the first 3 months of the year -- 10.3% higher than the number of layoffs announced in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 35.6% higher than job cuts announced in the same quarter of 2018. It's the highest number of job cuts in a quarter since 2015. The financial industry saw the third highest number of layoffs and the year-to-date total was 239% higher than it was in 2018.
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The US Just Had the Most Q1 Layoffs in a Decade More

The US Just Had the Most Q1 Layoffs in a Decade

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  • Peculiar news (Score:1, Interesting)

    by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 )

    This is strange. Didn't the President of the United States tell us he was creating more jobs than any President ever? The best jobs, even?

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by flippy ( 62353 )
      <sarcasm>Tim, who are you going to believe? The President of the United States or some fake news from a firm in the staffing industry?</sarcasm>

    • This is strange. Didn't the President of the United States tell us he was creating more jobs than any President ever?

      Lets see, you can choose to think about only number of jobs lost (although how many are truly lost, vs. just people being laid off...), while ignoring jobs created...

      Of course if you do that, you don't actually know the total [bls.gov], do you?

      Yep, more Fake News. What a surprise. *rolls eyes*.

      • Re:Well actually that is correct (Score:5, Informative)

        by flippy ( 62353 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @12:10PM (#58390510) Homepage
        From an analysis perspective, you can, in fact, only look at jobs lost. The original article is comparing apples to apples - job cuts in 2018Q1 vs job cuts in other recent quarters. It's not making a comment on the total job market or even attempting to. It's simply an analysis of job cuts only.

        • Total down, not just layoffs up (Score:5, Informative)

          by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @12:34PM (#58390678) Homepage

          You have to compare statistics over the same period.

          The article is about the first quarter 2019: that is, January through March. The job statistics for the first quarter are poor, mainly due to an absolutely terrible jobs report in February: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit... [bls.gov] First quarter 2019 is significantly down in employment compared to the 2018 average.

          The guy saying "fake news *rolls eyes*", however did the old switcheroo: he is just talking about March. March did bounce back... although it would be hard to not bounce back after such a low report for February, and it's still not even as high even as the average for 2018.

          • The job statistics for the first quarter are poor, mainly due to an absolutely terrible jobs report in February: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit [bls.gov]...

            Still positive in February though, as much as you pretend it was terrible.

            The guy saying "fake news *rolls eyes*", however did the old switcheroo: he is just talking about March

            Hey idiot, I posted the EXACT SAME LINK you did. How is mine a "Switcheroo", when my link covers January-March?

            You liars just can't help it, can you? What a retard.

            I'll let you have the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Seems about right. Company discloses some results of their investigation. You don't agree. Hence Fake News. You should run for President...oh, we already have a Fake President, oh well...maybe there is a job for you in the fast food preparation business...better grab it quick before a robot does.

      • Re:Well actually that is correct (Score:5, Interesting)

        by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @12:18PM (#58390572)

        The report you provided showed a greater growth in 2016, before Trump took office, than 2017. 2018 was better than before, followed by this year with the greatest number of layoffs since 2009 (and so far less growth than 2016 as well). For being all about the best jobs, and sacrificing everything for that goal, the results have been disappointing to say the least. So yes, my original point stands (even stronger now that you provided the statistics).

      • Looking at raw numbers is foolish anyway if your population isn't stable. You'd want to look at it as a matter of % of jobs lost at the very least, but even that doesn't matter if those people who were cut just get a job somewhere else. If some company goes out of business, it will layoff 100% of its employees, but it hardly matters if the industry overall is growing and those people will get new jobs at other companies who will see an increase in business due to a competitor exiting the market.

        All of th

      • (although how many are truly lost, vs. just people being laid off...)

        As someone who was laid off in June 2017 (along with 30 other people) and am presently "retired at 55" (though I'm still casually looking because I have value to offer and am a little bored), I'm not sure why you think there's a distinction. Those positions were not filled by other people -- either at my former employer or at other employers -- because the client simply wanted less work done on the contract at renewal. In cases where work is shifted from one employer to another (contract lost by one and

      • Yep, more Fake News.

        what is it with Trump supporters having trouble understanding simple words tht the rest of the world has no problem with.

        A coment on a forum isn't news.

        Oh actually on second thoughts I think you do understand the wods, you just want to discredit the entire concept so that it's harder for people to dismiss the fake news that supports your "worldview".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sun ( 104778 )

        Actually, I believe this statistics, on its own, is quite meaningful for "job stability".

        Even if the market keeps many people more-or-less employed, but they are frequently laid off and have to find a new employment, then that is not a very good sign for the market at large. At the very least, you'd have to say the market is volatile.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      But he did not tell you how long they would be existing!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      Total employment went up by over 1/2 million jobs in Q1, so yeah, he's creating jobs. The net change is what's important.

    • Potential of Trumpism? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shanen ( 462549 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @03:34PM (#58391780) Homepage Journal

      This is strange. Didn't the President of the United States tell us he was creating more jobs than any President ever? The best jobs, even?

      #PresidentTweety's ONLY concern is surviving past the election of 2020. Trump has NO long-term plans and he would not care AT ALL if the country collapsed into total bankruptcy the day after the election.

      I'm not optimistic about America's future. The Democratic Party primary process is quite similar to the GOP's, which in 2016 picked the least qualified and utterly worst candidate out of a large number of them. Now that Trump has proven "YUGE lies work", what's to stop the Democrats from nominating worse-than-Trump under the guise of anti-Trump?

      The only good aspect I can see is that Trump is a doddering old fool, so he can't live long enough for Trumpism to devolve all the way into Stalinism. Notwithstanding, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Trump locked the door on "executive time" and died of a stroke before anyone worked up the courage to check on him. That's how Stalin died in 1953. Any day now for Trump?

      Just venting, but I've already taken cover.

      • What low slouching reptilian beast would be "worse-than-trump?" I'm almost positive the bar has hit the floor.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Don't say that. Don't even THINK it.

          He who shall not be named will just take it as a challenge.

    • We're literally at the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years [nypost.com], and you're complaining???

      You must have really lambasted Obama when he was in office over his job statistics, right?

    • https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/0... [cnbc.com]

      March alone added 196k jobs.

  • that our economy is 'setting records on virtually every front' and 'probably the best our country has ever done'!

  • What did you expect? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The President behave erratically
    The Markets interpret this as a cause for uncertainty
    The Employers see a Risk and mitigate it by reducing expenses via headcount

    This isn't rocket science and that fact is demonstrated by how earnestly every single prior President in the past several decades has worked to instill market confidence

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Brew Bird ( 59050 )
      Or... the headline and summary are misleading in order to give Trump Derangement Syndrome another outlet to express itself. “Companies appear to be streamlining and updating their processes, and workforce reductions are increasingly becoming a part of these decisions. Consumer behavior and advances in technology are driving many of these cuts,” said Andrew Challenger, Vice President of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. or The majority of cuts this year are due to “restructuring;

    • 196000 jobs added last month.

  • Predictable (really) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slipped_bit ( 2842229 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @12:01PM (#58390450) Homepage

    The economy goes in cycles. We're overdue for a contraction.

    • The economy goes in cycles. We're overdue for a contraction.

      Don't worry guys. There's always money in the banana stand.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 )

      And indeed, the up cycle began in Obama's first term, and now, nearly a decade later, the cyclical down is coming. It demonstrates that its luck of the draw when a President is elected, and cycles have longer terms than election cycles.

      • Re:Predictable (really) (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @12:24PM (#58390606)

        And indeed, the up cycle began in Obama's first term, and now, nearly a decade later, the cyclical down is coming. It demonstrates that its luck of the draw when a President is elected, and cycles have longer terms than election cycles.

        Too bad Trump took credit for the economy doing great, cause now it's only reasonable that he takes the blame when it tanks too.

        • In that Trump is like every president before him. They'll take credit for recoveries that began long before the entered office, and will deflect blame for the down turns that happen under them. To my mind, it more demonstrates the extreme limitations of politicians, and that in economies as large as the United States, government policy can at best only make modest changes in overall economic performance.

          • I always remember growing up with people saying stuff like "Everything that happens when a President is in office is just the results of the president before him" a ton. I can't remember who was president at the time (ie: I can't remember if it was good/bad stuff during Clinton or good/bad stuff during Bush....)

            But later on it just felt like the following situations:

            Anything good during Bush = Clinton
            Anything bad during Bush = Bush
            Anything good during Obama = Obama
            Anything bad during Obama = Bush

            • Re:Predictable (really) (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05, 2019 @05:39PM (#58392326)

              Funny, I remember it differently

              Reagan mismanaged the economy by providing a taxpayer give-away to 'stimulate the economy' (supply side), eventually he faced reality and had to increase taxes to cover government expenses. GHW Bush got the full effect of the deregulation when the savings and loan scandal hit bottom and faced a recession as a result.

              Clinton got elected as a result of 'the economy stupid' and started spending government money on education and jobs stimulus (demand side) and the economy came roaring back through the go-go nineties. Clinton also continued with Bush's cuts to the military and balanced the budget giving the country a path to eliminate the national debt.

              At this point, Republicans repeatedly claimed that the good economy under Clinton was a result of Reagan's trickle-down and shouted down any reasonable arguments to the contrary.

              When GW Bush was elected, he immediately went on a crusade of tax cuts and deregulation, which would have tanked the economy on its own through no-doc mortgages and give-aways to the pharma industry. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars were kept of the books, but also acted like a boat anchor once that the banking scandal hit and tanked the economy.

              Once again, a Democrat enacted reasonable demand sided policies and the economy recovered.
              Once again the Republicans loudly took credit for anything good and tried to blame Obama for the War Debt (initially $4Trillion, but projected to be $14Trillion by the time it is paid off)

              And so it goes, and so it goes

              You have just provided one of the most inane examples of right-wing-nut-jobism, fun fact nobody is buying your bs any more

        • I mean, give him SOME credit. After launching trade wars with our allies and China, going against basically every economic lesson we learned in the 20th century, the global supply chains are basically being re-written. Once the tariffs are dropped, buyers of things like soybean are going to have no compelling reason to switch back to American suppliers. Whole industries will likely be changed for decades.

          He worked HARD to hasten this recession, give credit where credit is due!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lazarus ( 2879 )

        I think you have simplified the weakening of capital requirements of banks in the USA under Bush and the resulting asset-backed commercial paper fiasco that led to the crash of 2008 a bit much there MM. There may indeed be minor cycles in the marketplace caused by global supply and demand, but the role of regulation is to ensure that it doesn't become the wild west. The formula is easy: Financial institutions want weak or no regulation because they are beholden to their shareholders (and executive's ince

    • Overdue for a contraction (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @02:09PM (#58391286)

      The economy goes in cycles. We're overdue for a contraction.

      That's certainly true. It's been over a decade since the last recession, so one is likely on the way in the next 6 to 12 months. Trump's tariffs, trade wars and general instability certainly haven't helped, but a recession probably would have happened anyway. The real problem though is that the tools government normally uses to help ease a recession (cutting taxes and lowering interest rates) have already been used by Trump early in his term in a vain attempt to boost his popularity. Taxes can't be cut any further and he stopped the fed from raising rates during the boom so there's no room to lower them during the bust. This is going to be another bad recession with another long, slow recovery.

  • 196,000 jobs were added in March. During the same quarter 186,000 jobs on average were added per month. Certain industries are getting ready for a recession (including the financial industry).

    • More than that, we recently just hit the lowest jobless claims (i.e. new unemployment applications) since 1969.

      However, the labor force participation rate is only about 63%, meaning nearly 40% of eligible Americans have no job and are not looking for a job, and so don't count towards the unemployment or jobless figures.

      Finally, the highest labor force participation rate on record is only about 67%, and the lowest is 58%.

      In other words, you can support any finding you want with statistics as long as you're w

  • 196,000 jobs were added last month, a rebound from the February report. Economic analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected a gain of about 170,000 jobs in March. It was the 102nd straight month of job gains. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flippy ( 62353 )

      Why on earth would that warrant a downgrade of the thread?

      The original article is an analysis of job cuts only, not an analysis of the overall health of the job market.

      • Because we all know WHY this article was posted. We don't like Trump, he is destroying things, etc etc etc.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by flippy ( 62353 )

          If you choose to see it that way, so be it. I find absolutely NOTHING in the post itself or in the original link that indicates anything except a strict analysis of job cut/layoff numbers. Perhaps I'm expecting people to be able to actually read and understand reports more than I should.

          Yes, some posters are misinterpreting (either through ignorance or willfully) the meaning of the report, but that isn't a reason to discount the report itself.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The headline and that statistic can both be true.

      Those big tech companies, though, didn't get big by taking grandstanding politicians at their word. They live and die by data. And that includes economic data. They employ more economists than governments do (And have to increasingly rely on their own data - Because this government seems to like to appoint hacks who don't say things that make the party look bad. Herman Cain on the fed? A fucking goldbug? What a fucking joke!)

      These companies are realigning the

  • It seems to really depend on how the data is presented. Is it based on how many are collecting unemployment checks? Or hiring/firing data from Fortune 500 companies? Or number of business licenses issued (it is really easy to start a business, doesn't mean it will earn anything). Or one person working three jobs because each one is part time with meager wages? Or companies posting job openings with requirements of years of experience in various technologies that are new?

    Then it depends on who is reporting

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by flippy ( 62353 )

      If you read the original article, it is an analysis solely of job cuts, and not of the overall health of the economy or of the job market.

      In that regard, it is a completely valid analysis. Anything else anyone wants to read into it is on them.

  • This is completely contrarian to marketwatch report [marketwatch.com]

    Job numbers are so hard to follow because there's different ways of counting them, reporting them etc.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by flippy ( 62353 )

      No, it's not contrary to the marketwatch report. The two reports are stating completely different things.

      The marketwatch report is talking about the overall health of the economy and of the job market.

      The axios article is ONLY talking about job cuts / layoffs. It's not even attempting to analyze net job growth/loss

      The fact that some people (I'm not saying you, tatman, you actually seem to have a grip on it) can't tell the difference just means that they are incapable of reading an article/analysis and und

      • Yet, ONLY ONE report was posted here. I wonder why that is? The fact that YOU can't see what is happening is means you are oblivious. We get it: the editors hate Trump. I do too, but time to move on.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by flippy ( 62353 )
          What a lovely way of making assumptions about me. I DO see what's happening and I actually AGREE with you that the intent of the post was probably what you stated. But if one can't suggest that people learn to think for themselves and take analyses for exactly what they are and what they aren't, then perhaps Slashdot isn't the home of as many intelligent people as I thought.

        • I started off not really liking the man, But as time goes and I see how he brings the hate out in the people who claim to be better than everybody else because they can #Acceptandmoveon or are #Tolerant. I like him more and more every day. He is exposing the type of people I hate with a passion and wish to avoid. They will stab you in the back at the first opportunity if they think it will help them even a little bit.

  • This how we know this is fake. Stocks go up when you lay people off.

  • The U.S. has averaged ADDING 180K jobs each month across 2019. In March along, +196K jobs were added. This isn't to say there will be transitions as some companies cut and others add, but TFS makes it sound like the sky is falling when it isn't. That isn't to say were aren't headed into a slowdown in the next ~18 months, but we sure as Hell aren't there yet. https://www.ibj.com/articles/7... [ibj.com] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]
  • Will you Republicans still vote for him when the economy is in the crapper like it was in late 2007?
    Meanwhile Russia will celebrate because they'll have succeeded in disorganzing the U.S. to the point where we're completely paralyzed. Again.
    Nice job, Republicans.
  • The Trump Recession will probably start before the 2020 election...
  • People keep lambast me because I say the recession is coming.

  • Granted this story is /. click baity-ish. But there is some value in reading between the lines. If I am involved in both business and personal finance (which I am) I want to know where things are headed in the future,. So while the typical folks that want to make every story political bash it out in -1 Score land, I would say that there are more and more dots pointing to economic slowdown later this year. That's hardly surprising news given that we've had a long economic expansion and many other pundits

  • I keep saying this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @03:20PM (#58391688)
    they're gearing up for a recession. Corporations are squirreling away money for buy backs to bump the stock price so the CEO doesn't take a hit to his income.

    We should ban stock buy backs immediately. Pre-Reagan they were an illegal manipulation of the market. The damage they've done to the economy and to working class jobs can't be understated. The fact that Reagan got them past the American people like he did is a testament to how much he could get away with because folks loved him so damn much. We need to put a stop to that kind of politicking, where warm feelings replace sound policy.

  • ...when it could be highlighting that US Jobless claims have hit a low not seen since 1969
    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/0... [cnbc.com]

    I guess it depends which side of the political fence you are, which "truth" you believe is representative?

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