Tag Archives: Employment

Prepare for layoffs: 50% of employers anticipate a reduction

Revelations 18:2 ‘’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.

Important Takeaways:

  • 50% of employers expect job cuts, survey finds. Here’s how to prepare for a potential layoff
  • Best Buy, Ford Motor, HBO Max, Peloton, Shopify, Re/Max, Walmart and Wayfair are among the firms that have announced layoffs in recent weeks.
  • 50% of firms anticipate a reduction in overall headcount in the next six to 12 months, according to a PwC survey.
  • There are some steps workers worried about job cuts can do to prepare, according to employment and financial experts.
  • “They’re focusing on what they can control,” Sethi said of employers. “They’re dealing with geopolitics, supply-chain issues, inflation, war in Ukraine, all these factors for which they have to determine what their strategies are.”

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U.S. consumer sentiment plummets in early August to decade low

By Evan Sully and Lindsay Dunsmuir

(Reuters) -U.S. consumer sentiment dropped sharply in early August to its lowest level in a decade, in a worrying sign for the economy as Americans gave faltering outlooks on everything from personal finances to inflation and employment, a survey showed on Friday.

The unexpected reading could give Federal Reserve policymakers pause if it translates in the months ahead to a dent in economic activity. The central bank has been getting closer to a decision on when to begin pulling back the extraordinary stimulus it put in place to shield the economy from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The University of Michigan said its preliminary consumer sentiment index fell to 70.2 in the first half of this month from a final reading of 81.2 in July. That was the lowest level since 2011, and there have been only two larger declines in the index over the past 50 years. Those were at the depths of the 2007-2009 recession and during the first wave of shutdowns in April 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.

The losses were widespread across income, age, and education subgroups and spanned all regions. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index would remain unchanged at 81.2.

U.S. stock market indexes slipped immediately after the report was released, while the price of gold gained ground. U.S. Treasury bond yields hit session lows.

“The renewed plunge suggests the latest wave of virus cases driven by the Delta variant could be a bigger drag on the economy than we had thought,” said Andrew Hunter, an economist at Capital Economics.

Economic growth is still expected to grow this year at its fastest pace in four decades after falling into a brief recession in 2020 caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But the recovery is showing some indication of cooling off.

COVID-19 cases have doubled in the past two weeks to reach a six-month peak as the more transmissible Delta variant spreads rapidly across the country. Labor shortages across the service sector also persist while supply chain disruptions have continued.

“The pandemic’s resurgence due to the Delta variant has been met with a mixture of reason and emotion…mainly from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end,” Richard Curtin, the survey director, said in a statement.

The survey’s gauge of current economic conditions also declined to a reading of 77.9 from 84.5 in July while its measure of consumer expectations slid to 65.2 from 79.0 in July.

The survey also showed consumers raising their expectations for medium term inflation, another measure the central bank is closely monitoring to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored.

The survey’s one-year inflation expectation edged lower to 4.6%, down from 4.7%, but its five-year inflation outlook ticked up to 3.0% from 2.8% in July.

Consumer price increases slowed in July, the Labor Department said on Wednesday, but inflation overall remained at a historically high level amid lingering supply-chain disruptions and stronger demand for travel-related services.

(Reporting by Evan Sully and Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Fed’s Waller: ‘Go early and go fast’ on taper

By Ann Saphir

(Reuters) – Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller on Monday said the U.S. central bank could start to reduce its support for the economy by October if the next two monthly jobs reports each show employment rising by 800,000 to 1 million, as he expects.

“We should go early and go fast, in order to make sure we’re in position to raise rates in 2022, if we have to,” Waller said in an interview on CNBC, adding that he could see the Fed announcing a reducing in its monthly bond purchases in September and a start to that reduction in October.

And once the Fed begins the process, Waller said, “There’s no reason you’d want to go slow on the taper, to prolong it – you want to get it done and get it over.”

The Fed is buying $80 billion in Treasuries and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month to help push downward on borrowing costs and speed the recovery. It has said it will continue to make purchases at that pace until the economy makes “substantial further progress” toward the Fed’s goals of full employment and 2% inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week the job market recovery is still “a ways off” from the point where it would be appropriate for the Fed to start paring its bond purchases.

Speaking Friday, Fed Governor Lael Brainard echoed that sentiment, indicating in a speech Friday that she would want to have data from the September jobs report – not available until early October — to make such a decision.

To Waller, an increase of some 1.6 million to 2 million jobs in July and August would mean that the economy will have regained 85% of its job losses, Waller said. That, in his view, meets the “substantial further progress” bar for tapering.

The government is due to release its July report on Friday, and economists estimate it will show U.S. employers added about 880,000 jobs last month.

Waller’s former boss, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, on Friday also called for the Fed to begin reducing its bond-buying by the fall.

Most on Wall Street have been expecting the taper to start late in 2021 or in 2022.

Waller said he does not believe the Delta variant of the coronavirus will “sideline” the economy. He added that while he believes the recent hot readings on inflation will subside later in the year, there’s “upside risk” to that expectation.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Nick Zieminski)

Fed’s Powell calls for broad national drive to full employment

By Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Invoking post-World War II efforts to reach full employment and pledging continued loose monetary policy to help the process, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made a broad call Wednesday for a “society-wide commitment” to get Americans back to work, particularly minorities and those ousted from lower-paying jobs during the pandemic.

“Given the number of people who have lost their jobs and the likelihood that some will struggle to find work in the post-pandemic economy, achieving and sustaining maximum employment will require more than supportive monetary policy,” Powell said in remarks to the Economic Club of New York. “It will require a society-wide commitment, with contributions from across government and the private sector.”

While the Fed has already promised that borrowing costs for companies and households will be kept low as the economy recovers, Powell’s remarks spoke to the need for a more comprehensive approach to end the jobs crisis that followed the onset of the coronavirus last spring. In scope and approach, including a call for long-term investment, the remarks aligned closely with the sort of proposals being discussed by President Joe Biden and his Treasury Secretary and former Fed chair Janet Yellen.

The United States remains about 9 million jobs short of where it was a year ago.

“Fully realizing the benefits of a strong labor market will take continued support from both near-term policy and longer-run investments so that all those seeking jobs have the skills and opportunities that will enable them to contribute to, and share in, the benefits of prosperity,” Powell said.

His remarks come as the Biden administration pushes a $1.9 trillion emergency spending bill through Congress, while also laying plans for a longer-term infrastructure effort that some analysts expect will also be in the trillions of dollars.

Though the Fed has no direct say over how the federal government spends money or how much it raises, central bank policy does influence the interest rate the government pays and thus the cost particularly of longer-term investments.

During the pandemic, Fed policymakers have generally set concerns about the level of federal debt to the side and focused more on the economy’s immediate needs.

Powell on Wednesday cemented that stance, noting that after World War II, as the economy transitioned from wartime and needed to absorb millions of returning soldiers in the labor force, the Employment Act of 1946 committed the government “to use all practicable means” to see that anyone willing and able to work can find “useful employment.”

“At present, we are a long way from such a labor market,” he said.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Powell: Jobs recovery faces ‘long tail’ of a couple of years

(Reuters) – Despite “a lot of strength in the economy,” millions of U.S. workers displaced from restaurant, travel, and similar jobs will struggle to find new employment and need steady support from the government, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday, warning a full jobs recovery could take years.

“There is a particular part of the economy which involves getting people together and feeding them, flying them around the country, having them sleep in hotels, entertaining them,” Powell said in online remarks to the Fed’s annual economic symposium. “That part of the economy will find it very difficult to recover…That is millions of people who are going to struggle to find work. We need to stay with those people….We are looking at long tail of probably a couple of years at least.”

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. layoffs abate; job openings plunge

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Layoffs in the United States fell in April, but remained the second-highest on record, while job openings dropped, suggesting the labor market could take years to recover from the COVID-19 crisis despite a surprise rebound in employment in May.

The Labor Department said on Tuesday in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, that layoffs and discharges dropped 3.8 million in April to 7.7 million.

That was the second-highest level since the government started tracking the series in 2000. The layoffs and discharge rate fell to 5.9% in April from a record high of 7.6% in March.

The labor market was slammed by the closure of nonessential businesses in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19. Many establishments reopened in May, with the economy adding a stunning 2.509 million jobs last month after a record 20.7 million plunge in April, government data showed on Friday.

Despite last month’s rebound in hiring, economists warn it could take even a decade for the labor market to recoup all the jobs lost during the COVID-19 recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of U.S. recessions, declared on Monday that the economy slipped into recession in February.

The NBER does not define a recession as two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP as is the rule of thumb in many countries, instead, it looks for a drop in economic activity, spread across the economy and lasting more than a few months.

The government also reported that job openings, a measure of labor demand, declined 965,000 to 5.0 million on the last business day of April, the lowest since December 2014.

The job openings rate dropped to 3.7%, the lowest since January 2017, from 3.8% in March. Vacancies peaked at 7.52 million in January 2019.

Hiring tumbled 1.6 million to a record low of 3.5 million in April. The hiring rate plunged to an all-time low of 2.7% from 3.4% in March.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Amazon to offer permanent roles to 70% of 175,000 new U.S. hires

By Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc plans to offer permanent jobs to about 70% of the U.S. workforce it has hired temporarily to meet consumer demand during the coronavirus pandemic, the company told Reuters on Thursday.

The world’s largest online retailer will begin telling 125,000 warehouse employees in June that they can keep their roles longer-term. The remaining 50,000 workers it has brought on will stay on seasonal contracts that last up to 11 months, a company spokeswoman said.

The decision is a sign that Amazon’s sales have increased sufficiently to justify an expanded workforce for order fulfillment, even as government lockdowns ease and rivals open their retail stores for pickup.

Amazon started the hiring spree in March with a blog post appealing to workers laid off by restaurants and other shuttered businesses, promising employment “until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back.”

Seattle-based Amazon did not disclose how much it was spending to make the positions permanent and whether that cost would be in addition to the $4 billion it has forecast for virus-related expenses.

The permanent roles come with benefits that seasonal workers lack, such as employer-offered health insurance and retirement plans.

Some Amazon staff, unions and elected officials have said the company has put employees’ health at risk by keeping nearly all its warehouses operational during the pandemic. At least 800 U.S.-based workers have tested positive for the highly contagious virus, according to figures compiled by one employee, which Amazon has not commented on.

The company has increased cleaning, added social distancing measures and offered face masks, fever checks and virus tests in response.

Amazon said it had 840,400 full and part-time staff at the end of last quarter while it still was in the process of hiring. It has not reported an updated number.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

U.S. civil rights agency says employers can test workers for COVID-19

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) – The U.S. agency that enforces civil rights laws against disability discrimination said on Thursday that companies can test employees for COVID-19 before permitting them to enter the workplace as long as the tests are accurate and reliable.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) last month said employers may take workers’ temperatures without violating the the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but Thursday’s guidance appears to authorize a broader array of testing options.

The commission said mandatory medical testing, which is generally prohibited by the ADA, is allowed if it is “job related and consistent with business necessity.”

Applying that standard, the new guidance allows employers to take steps to determine if employees entering the workplace have COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, because the virus poses a “direct threat” to the health of others.

But before implementing testing, employers should review standards from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other authorities about which type of testing is considered safe and accurate, the commission said.

And employers who test workers should still require employees to observe infection control practices, such as social distancing and regular handwashing, to prevent transmission of the coronavirus.

The EEOC announcement comes as some states begin to lift shelter-in-place orders and allow businesses to reopen and their employees to return to work.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Trump, Powell met Monday at White House to discuss economy

By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell met at the White House on Monday morning, their second meeting since Powell started the job in February 2017 and soon after became the target of frequent criticism from the president who had appointed him.

The Fed announced the meeting in a morning press release, noting they met “to discuss the economy, growth, employment and inflation.”

“Everything was discussed including interest rates, negative interest, low inflation, easing, Dollar strength & its effect on manufacturing, trade with China, E.U. & others, etc.,” Trump tweeted soon after, calling the session “good & cordial.”

The Fed’s wording closely followed its description of Powell’s first meeting with Trump, this past February, over a dinner that also included Vice Chair Richard Clarida.

Trump’s tweet marked a change in tone. The president in recent months derided Powell and colleagues as “pathetic” and “boneheads” for not cutting interest rates, and in August labeled Powell personally as an enemy of the United States on a par with China leader Xi Jinping.

The Fed in its statement was careful to note what wasn’t discussed: Powell’s expectations for future monetary policy. Trump has for more than a year charged the Fed with undermining his economic policies by, in his view, keeping interest rates too high, and depriving the United States of what Trump feels are the benefits of the negative rates of interest set by the European and Japanese central banks.

The U.S. central bank has cut rates three times this year – in part to offset what it views as damage done by the Trump administration’s trade war with China. But after their last meeting, in October, policymakers signaled they would lower rates no further unless the economy takes a serious turn for the worse.

Less than 24 hours after that decision, Trump laid into Powell again, saying people are “VERY disappointed” in him and the Fed. And only last week, Trump lobbed another dig in a tweet that noted inflation was low: “(do you hear that Powell?)”

CONSISTENT

Powell “did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming information that bears on the outlook for the economy,” the Fed said in its statement.

Powell appeared before congressional committees twice last week, and the Fed said his comments to Trump were “consistent” with his statements to lawmakers.

“Chair Powell said that he and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective and non-political analysis.”

The meeting included Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Powell met with Trump in February, and in each of the three following months the two had a brief phone conversation. That compares with the three times his predecessor, Janet Yellen, met President Barack Obama at the White House; Yellen also met with Trump during her final year as Fed chair.

Powell’s has made much more extensive and deliberate efforts to court members of the House and Senate, even as Trump expressed regret for appointing Powell and reportedly explored whether he could remove him.

Fed chairs are appointed to four-year terms by the president, but once confirmed by the Senate are intended to be insulated from White House political pressure over how to manage monetary policy. They can only be removed “for cause,” not over a disagreement over policy.

Meetings between Fed chairs and presidents are not unprecedented but they are infrequent, as opposed to the nearly weekly sessions that central bankers have with the head of the Treasury.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Not a baby factory: South Korea tries to fix demographic crisis with more gender equality

A volunteer takes care of a baby who was left in the baby box at Jusarang Community Church in Seoul, South Korea, December 18, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

By Joori Roh

SEOUL (Reuters) – In just over a decade, South Korea has spent the equivalent of a small European economy trying to fix its demographic crisis, yet birthrates have dropped to the lowest in the world.

This year, President Moon Jae-In, who describes himself as a feminist president, is testing a new angle: showing women more respect.

At the end of last year, South Korea announced plans to remove some of the disincentives for employing women, allowing both parents to take parental leave at the same time and extending paid paternal leave. Employers also get incentives to allow either parent to work fewer hours.

“Efforts on gender equality are very timely,” said Shin Eun-kyung, an economist with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. South Korea is the worst place for women to work in the OECD, despite women being among the organization’s best educated, and more highly so than men.

But the measures go beyond the workplace: mothers can choose to give the baby their own last name and a tickbox on birth certificates showing whether a baby was born outside marriage will be removed.

Fertility treatments will be offered to single women and unmarried couples as well. Social campaigns will encourage men to participate more in child care and household chores.

Contrast that with a 2016 effort by the previous government, run by the country’s first woman president, Park Geun-hye, which launched a website carrying a real-time statistical heatmap of women of child-bearing age, marriages and births in the hope of spurring competition between cities and regions.

The website was taken down after one day, with women complaining it made them feel like “reproductive organs”.

“The country sees women as baby factories,” says Hong Sook-young, who produces the country’s most popular children TV show. Asked about the latest measures, Hong said “at least pretending to hear what people really want is a start toward change”.

 

TEMPLE BONDING

South Korea’s demographic time bomb is ticking louder. The government’s latest forecast sees its population declining from 2027, and a presidential committee said the country’s economic growth potential could fall to below 1 percent.

Birth rates have long been a policy priority: since 2006, the government has spent 152.9 trillion won ($135.65 billion) – about the size of an economy like Hungary or Nevada – on perks for families and subsidies for children from birth through university and beyond. Last year’s 26.3 trillion low birth policy budget was more than half the defense spending of a country technically still at war with its northern neighbor.

But demographic experts say money is not the main issue: the experience of advanced countries with higher birth rates, such as France or Sweden, shows gender equality plays a crucial role.

The previous allocation of resources drew criticism as well.

The government went far beyond child allowances and subsidizing care and education. For instance, it funded temple stays for family bonding and financed youth seeking brief jobs abroad.

Many such programs will end, with the 2019 birth-support budget cut by a quarter, to 20.5 trillion won.

“It should have been cut a long time ago,” said Jung Jae-hoon, social welfare professor at Seoul Women’s University.

Jung cautioned, however, the signal the government was finally sending will take a long time to filter through the conservative East Asian society.

Births outside marriage, for instance, are so widely frowned upon that they amount to only 1.9 percent of the total, the lowest anywhere. Experts compare that to France, where the ratio is over 50 percent and the birth rate is 1.9 versus South Korea’s 1.05. Abortion is illegal and adoption rules very strict.

The stigma of out-of-wedlock babies has seen Seoul’s Jusarang Community Church build an oven-sized “baby box”, with cushions and a heating system into its outside wall.

Last year, 261 children were abandoned across the country, according to Statistics Korea.

JOBS FOR MEN

About 56 percent of women aged 15-64 work in South Korea, below the OECD average of almost 60 percent, and 72-75 percent in Denmark and Sweden, where birth rates are among the highest of advanced economies.

Recruiters say married young women are less likely to get job opportunities due to discrimination.

In November, the Supreme Court upheld a four-year jail sentence against a former CEO of state-run Korea Gas Safety Corp over manipulating interview scores to knock women out of the hiring process.

While Samsung Electronics has a more balanced gender ratio than Apple globally, with women accounting for 45 percent of the staff versus a third at its U.S. rival, only one in four staff at its Korea headquarters are women. None of the nine board members at Hyundai Motor Co are women, versus six out of 12 at General Motors.

“The whole period of before, during and after childbirth weighs on our career,” said a female assistant manager at Hyundai Motor. The pay gap between sexes only makes it harder, she added.

South Korea’s gender wage gap is highest among advanced countries at 34.6 percent, above OECD average of 13.8 percent.

A Hyundai Motor spokeswoman said the firm was committed to providing equal opportunities to all employees and opposes discrimination. A Samsung Electronics spokeswoman said the company has been recruiting more females, including in managerial positions, and that most staff return to work after parental leave and its daycare centers can look after 3,000 children.

WEAK ECONOMY

Still, critics say while Moon’s approach to birth rates is an improvement, his job and housing policies discourage parenthood. Minimum wage hikes have led to higher unemployment, while larger downpayment requirements have made homes unaffordable for many.

“Creating a structure that enables us to have our own house is mostly needed,” said Lee Kyoung-min, a store manager at Lotte Mart, a father of three.

Some also argue work-life balance could be better: Moon in July cut the working week to 52 hours from 68, but South Koreans still work 15 percent longer than the OECD average.

If birth rates don’t improve, South Korea’s economy could be 5 percent smaller by 2060, as productivity falls and higher spending for elderly care leaves less room for investment, the National Assembly Budget Office estimates.

Industries catering for babies are struggling. Seoul has lost one in four maternity wards and in 2018 the capital sacked more than half its teachers.

Ryu Won-woo, manager of baby fair organizer BeFe, praised the government’s measures, especially those encouraging more responsibilities for dads. But he does not expect quick results.

“More local baby-product companies may disappear before Korea sees more babies,” Ryu said.

(Reporting by Joori Roh; Editing by Marius Zaharia and Lincoln Feast.)