Jaguar Land Rover to cut 2,000 jobs globally: company

LONDRES, UNITED KINGDOM - Jaguar Land Rover on Wednesday said that it planned to lay off around 2,000 staff in the next financial year.

The largest car manufacturer in Britain, owned by India's Tata Motors, said in a statement: "We anticipate a net reduction of around 2,000 people from our global salaried workforce in the next financial year."

Jaguar Land Rover has almost 40,000 employees worldwide, according to its 2019-20 annual report. 

It had announced Monday that the Jaguar brand would produce only electric vehicles by 2025 and that Land Rover would have its first fully-electric vehicle in 2024.

The car maker said it would invest £2.5 billion ($3.5 billion, 2.9 billion euros) annually under its 'Reimagine' plan, which aims for its supply chain and operations to become carbon neutral by 2039. 

It had said this plan would also involve substantially reducing its non-manufacturing operations.

The radical overhaul comes under new chief executive Thierry Bollore, who joined in September.

The statement released Wednesday said that a "full review of the Jaguar Land Rover organization is already underway".

It said the organization had already started to brief salaried staff on the job cuts, which do not affect manufacturing staff paid by the hour.

Jaguar Land Rover has plants in the West Midlands area of England as well as facilities in Slovakia, India, China and Brazil.

Its owner Tata Motors is part of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group.

Agence France-Presse

Amazon to expand tech hubs, corporate offices, adding 3,500 jobs

WASHINGTON - Amazon unveiled plans Tuesday to hire 3,500 new employees as part of an expansion of its technology hubs and corporate offices across the United States.

The US technology and e-commerce giant said the latest plans call for some 2,000 new jobs in New York City, where Amazon has acquired the landmark Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue.

The move comes after Amazon -- which has seen gains in revenue during the pandemic from its e-commerce and cloud computing operations -- said it would make permanent 125,000 of the 175,000 jobs it added since the start of the public health crisis.

The latest moves expand Amazon tech hubs in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York, Phoenix, and San Diego and represent an investment of some $1.4 billion, according to the company.

"People from all walks of life come to Amazon to develop their careers -- from recent graduates looking for a place to turn their ideas into high-impact products, to veterans accessing new jobs in cloud computing thanks to our upskilling programs," said Beth Galetti, senior vice president of human resources at Amazon.

"These 3,500 new jobs will be in cities across the country with strong and diverse talent pools. We look forward to helping these communities grow their emerging tech workforce."

In New York -- where Amazon had announced but then canceled plans for a high-profile headquarters -- the announcement confirms Amazon's acquisition of the iconic Lord & Taylor department store building earlier this year, in a deal reported to be worth nearly $1 billion, from office-sharing startup WeWork.

The building will be used for some 58,000 square meters (630,000 square feet) of office space, according to Amazon.

Amazon, whose expansion has attracted increased antitrust scrutiny in the US and elsewhere, said its global workforce now stands at some 876,000.

In addition to e-commerce and cloud computing, Amazon has operations in streaming video and music and artificial intelligence and owns the Whole Foods supermarket chain.

It recently unveiled plans to invest $10 billion for its planned space-based internet delivery system that will deploy more than 3,000 low-orbit satellites.

Agence France-Presse

‘Scarring’ of US economy dims future for hiring

The number of new state unemployment claims dipped last week, but job losses continue to batter the economy as rising coronavirus cases pushed some regions of the country to reverse course and reimpose shutdown orders on businesses.

More than 1.3 million workers, seasonally adjusted, filed new claims for regular unemployment benefits last week, the government reported Thursday. Another million first-time claims were filed under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Taken together, the report paints a disappointing picture of recovery: Total new unemployment claims have edged up from their mid-June lows.

Although hiring nationwide has picked up in recent weeks, most of the payroll gains were temporarily laid-off workers who were rehired. The pool of employees whose previous jobs have disappeared and who must search for new ones has grown.

“Their circumstances may be more challenging to rectify than those who were laid off because of a temporary closure,” said Elizabeth Akers, who was a staff economist with the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. “Finding new jobs will be more difficult. There’s been scarring in the economy.”

Recent readings from employment sites also point to more lasting damage to the labor market. Overall job openings at ZipRecruiter rose last week, for instance, but the number of new jobs posted declined for the fourth week in a row.

“For now, at least, that suggests the increase in vacancies is being driven by a slowdown in hiring, not an increase in labor demand,” said Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s labor economist.

“Recent jobs reports are encouraging, but the increase in employment entirely reflects rehires of workers on temporary layoff,” she added. “The recovery in new hiring has yet to begin.”

The longer the pandemic dampens or halts shopping, dining out, travel and business operations, the more likely it is that jobs put on a brief hold simply vanish.

Brooks Brothers, the nation’s oldest apparel brand in continuous operation, filed for bankruptcy this week and permanently closed 51 stores. And airlines announced that they might lay off or furlough tens of thousands of employees in October despite billions of dollars in government aid because air travel has not rebounded. 

In Texas, where a jump in coronavirus cases has led to a new round of business closings and other restrictions, unemployment claims have risen. More than 117,000 people filed for benefits in Texas last week, a jump of more than 20,000 from a week earlier. It was the second straight weekly increase and the most new filings since late May, although still below the peak in early April.

A wide range of indicators recently have suggested that the economic rebound is losing momentum in states where virus cases are rising quickly.

The unemployment data released Thursday didn’t paint a clear picture, however. New filings fell in Oklahoma, Florida and other virus hot spots, and rose only slightly in Arizona. Claims rose in New Jersey and New York, states where the virus is comparatively under control. And economists caution against reading too much into week-to-week changes in state filings, which can be volatile.

Congress created the emergency Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program in March to extend benefits to independent contractors, self-employed workers and others who don’t qualify for regular state unemployment insurance. The effort got off to a slow start: Many states struggled to roll out the program while dealing with a record number of regular unemployment claims. Jobless workers across the country reported encountering jammed websites, lost paperwork and confusing or contradictory instructions.

Those issues have spilled into the data itself. Backlogs, data-entry errors and other issues have made it hard to know how many people are receiving benefits under the program, or exactly when their claims were first filed. At least some states appear to be counting the same recipients multiple times.

But economists say there is little doubt that the program is helping millions of workers who would ordinarily fall through the cracks of the unemployment safety net. More than 10 million people have filed claims under the emergency pandemic program, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

A weekly $600 federal supplement for all jobless workers is scheduled to end this month. The Paycheck Protection Program, an effort designed to preserve jobs by offering forgivable loans to small business, was recently extended through October.

Liz Etheredge, the chief executive of Mecklenburg Paint in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the federal loan made it possible for her to keep workers employed.

The spring paint season was just starting when the pandemic hit. “Oh, gosh, things just pretty much stopped,” said Etheredge, whose company also handles property management.

Initially she helped most of her 30 employees apply for unemployment benefits, which she said was time consuming and confusing. “One day I waited on hold for three hours to reach somebody” with the state to work out glitches with benefit applications, she said, “and then another day I waited two hours.”

She applied for a Paycheck Protection Program loan, hoping to avoid permanently laying off painters.

“It came just in time,” said Etheredge, who was able to avoid using up her savings.

She has put everyone back on the payroll through the use of her loan money, so she expects that the entire amount will be forgiven.

“I just worry how this country is going to pay it all back,” she said.

Lisa D. Cook, a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University, worries what will happen when these assistance programs dry up.

“At the heart of this is job loss,” said Cook, who testified before a congressional committee this week. State and local governments are laying off health care and education workers, and eviction bans are expiring even though a significant chunk of household renters and businesses are having trouble making payments.

“I just worry about this all piling up in the system,” she said.

Many jobless workers may have to wait a long time for the labor market to improve. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said this week that high unemployment would probably persist in the United States and other developed countries at least until 2022.

-The New York Times Company-

Pilots, once in short supply, now losing jobs

Joshua Weinstein always wanted to be an airline pilot, but the industry was in crisis when he started college in 2002, so he became a middle school teacher instead.

He loved that job, but after a decade of flying in his free time at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, Weinstein began hearing more about a looming pilot shortage and left the classroom in 2018 to pursue his dream. It worked: In January, he started training to fly for ExpressJet, which operates regional flights for United Airlines. But the coronavirus pandemic, which devastated the airline business, could thin the ranks of pilots by the thousands and has already put the nascent careers of people like Weinstein on hold.

“The worst part right now is that the only thing we know is that nobody knows anything,” he said. “There’s uncertainty. We just don’t know what happens next.”

For years, flight schools, airlines and experts encouraged people like Weinstein to become pilots. They promised young recruits a job that was lucrative and secure because thousands of pilots in their late 50s and early 60s would retire in the coming years and demand for travel would continue growing. The profession is still stacked with older aviators, but airlines are expected to make deep cuts in the coming months, and the pilots most at risk are those who are just starting out.

While air travel has recovered somewhat, it is still only about one-fourth of what it was last year, according to airport security data. Most experts say the recovery will be slow and uneven because of a patchwork of travel bans and the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. The recent surge in coronavirus infections has already forced some governors to delay reopening their state economies and to shut down bars and other businesses. If cases continue to increase, as some public health experts fear, air travel could become a lot less appealing. 

To prepare for that uncertain future, the largest airlines in the US are stockpiling billions of dollars in cash. If ticket sales do not recover soon, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United have said they could resort to job cuts as soon as Oct. 1, the first day when airlines are free to eliminate jobs and reduce hours under a stimulus law that Congress approved in March.

Airlines could lay off, furlough or reduce the hours of tens of thousands of pilots, cuts that would disproportionately fall on those who have less union seniority and training. Major airlines have already stopped hiring pilots after posting hundreds of openings in the first quarter of the year, according to Future & Active Pilot Advisors, a consulting firm.

Several companies are offering buyout packages to avoid deeper cuts later. Southwest has acknowledged in discussions with its pilots union that the airline is likely overstaffed by more than 1,000 pilots. The company is offering several years of partial pay and benefits to those who agree to leave the company temporarily or permanently. Delta warned last week that it could furlough nearly 2,600 pilots and is offering early-retirement packages.

Some pilots said the turmoil was nerve-racking, but those who have been in the profession for a while have come to expect it.

“You kind of know going in that aviation has high highs and low lows,” said Lisa Archibald, 41, a Delta pilot and volunteer with the airline’s pilot union, the Delta Master Executive Council. “You do it because you love what you do.”

Like Weinstein, Archibald arrived at the job by way of a detour. After graduating from Purdue University’s School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, she was hired to fly at American Eagle, which American Airlines owns. But the job started days before the 2001 terrorist attacks, and she was furloughed after just a few weeks.

About a year later, Archibald found a job piloting corporate jets, which she did for 15 years. She joined Delta in May 2017.

Unsurprisingly, pilots are passionate about the profession. That is why they spend years in grueling training programs, trying to rack up the minimum flight hours and credentials needed to become airline pilots, at a cost of up to $100,000, not including the price of a college degree.

Weinstein, 36, estimates that he easily spent between $50,000 and $70,000 on flight training, offset by what he earned working at the flight school and teaching middle school in New Jersey over a decade. At ExpressJet, first-year pilots earn a minimum $36,000 a year.
Whatever the outcome, Weinstein said, all that effort has been worth it.

“I have something to show for it because I did make it to the airlines and I did get hired and I did achieve that dream,” he said. “And so part of me says not to regret a single moment of it, because I put my mind to something and I did it.”

The New York Times Company

US workers face an unequal future when virus recedes

WASHINGTON — As the coronavirus worked its way across the United States, it cleaved the country's workforce in two: those who have the ability to work from home, and those who do not.

From baristas to hotel workers to tourism operators, people whose job requires them to show up in-person were among the hardest hit in the waves of layoffs, and also those on the low end of the US pay scale.

Unemployment is now at a level not seen in since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and moving higher, while the coronavirus is expected to threaten the country for months to come, factors analysts fear will only serve to deepen inequality for workers in the world's largest economy. 

"People who are well-off and highly skilled and work from home are going to demand that their employers make accommodations for them," said Jesse Rothstein, a former chief economist at the Labor Department who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

But "lower skilled workers... are taking on more risk without more pay."

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has described the pandemic as "a great increaser of inequality," but experts say that is not inevitable, particularly if Congress passes new stimulus measures to support battered businesses and consumers.

"Every single cleavage we had before is widening," said Claudia Sahm, a former principal economist with the Federal Reserve who is now with the Washington Center for Economic Growth.

"We have an opportunity to do something better than what we were doing before, but it will not just happen. It has to be a policy effort."

AN UNEQUAL RECESSION 

When the coronavirus arrived, the US economy had a tight labor market, with an unemployment rate near a historic low of 3.5 percent in February, while long-stagnant wages were just starting to rise.

Yet the job market was not as healthy as it appeared.

The US Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) -- which uses government employment statistics to gauge the balance between non-supervisory jobs with decent pay and those without -- has been charting downwards for years. 

In February, the JQI was back near its all-time low reached in March 2012 as many of the jobs being created paid below the mean weekly wage, according to the index compiled by a consortium of academics and researchers.

And a study late last year from the Brookings Institution found 44 percent of US workers qualify as "low wage," with median annual earnings of just $18,000 a year.

When the pandemic hit and sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 in April and the economy into an almost-certain recession, low-paid workers in industries like leisure, hospitality and food services were laid off in such large numbers their absence skewed average wages upwards.

While government data show most consider their layoffs to be temporary, Michael Weber, an associate professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, warned that if businesses close or scale back staffing, job seekers will be forced to compete against each other, driving wages lower, as is typical in recession job markets.

WHO'S HIRING? 

Grocery store chain Kroger, e-commerce giant Amazon and several fast food companies have announced massive hirings since the pandemic hit, but offer no safe haven. 

"Those are the very jobs that are under criticism over the last few years given that they pay unreasonably low wages," Weber said. And those type of jobs "come hand-in-hand with more precarious income situation."

Robert Hockett, a law professor at Cornell University who is a principal researcher on the JQI, said job seekers could demand risk premiums at workplaces where they face exposure to the coronavirus, or take equity stakes in struggling companies to help keep them afloat.

In fact, the Fed reported this week that Boston area employers were giving workers temporary pay increases of up to 30 percent, in part to compensate for the increased risk and hold onto their employees.

But unemployed workers could end up forced to accept whatever jobs they can find, particularly if Congress fails to extend the small business loans and unemployment benefits temporarily expanded in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act approved in March.

"We're kind of on a tightrope or a knife's edge at this moment," Hockett said in an interview.

President Donald Trump's administration has been lukewarm towards further spending on aid for workers, predicting the coronavirus will be defeated and a strong economic rebound starting in July, even as many economists remain skeptical of a rapid, V-shaped recovery.

"It's all going to ride on how desperate workers are," Hockett said, "And that's going to ride on public policy positions."

Agence France-Presse 

Google rescinds offers to thousands of contract workers

OAKLAND, Calif. — Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers.

“We’re slowing our pace of hiring and investment, and are not bringing on as many new starters as we had planned at the beginning of the year,” Google said in an email to contracting agencies last week that was seen by The New York Times. The company told the firms that it “will not be moving forward to onboard” the people that the agencies had recruited to work at Google.

The move affected more than 2,000 people globally who had signed offers with the agencies to be a contract or temp worker, according to three people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly on the matter.

Google employs more than 130,000 contractors and temp workers, a shadow workforce that outnumbers its 123,000 full-time employees. Google’s full-time staff are rewarded with high salaries and generous perks, but temps and contractors often receive less pay, fewer benefits and do not have the same protections, even though they work alongside full timers.

The coronavirus crisis has underscored that disparity. Google announced in April that it was extending its employee paid leave policy to 14 weeks from 8 weeks for caretakers, including parents looking after children whose schools are closed. For employees working from home, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said Tuesday that they could spend $1,000 for equipment and furniture like standing desks and ergonomic chairs.

Many of the contract and temp candidates who had agreed to work at Google before the pandemic took hold in the United States were let go without any severance or financial compensation. This came after weeks of uncertainty as Google repeatedly postponed their start dates during which time they were not paid by Google or the staffing agencies.

Some of the would-be contractors left stable, full-time jobs once they received an employment offer at Google and are now searching for work in a difficult labor market. Some, who are Americans, said the rescinded offers have complicated and, in some cases, delayed their ability to receive unemployment benefits because they left their last jobs voluntarily, according to several of the workers facing this dilemma.

In mid-April, Pichai told employees in a memo that the company planned to “significantly” slow the pace of hiring this year, with the exception of several strategic areas. A company spokeswoman said at the time that Google intended to bring on the people who it had already hired but who had not started.

But this did not seem to apply to contractors or temp workers for Google and Alphabet, which has a market capitalization of near $1 trillion. It made $6.8 billion in profit in the first three months of 2020, despite what it called “a significant and sudden slowdown” in advertising.

“If these people were promised jobs at Alphabet, which is worth a trillion dollars, it seems like the company has a responsibility to take them on,” said Ben Gwin, who works as a data analyst in a Google office for HCL America, a contracting agency. “It’s not like Google can’t afford it.”

Gwin led a unionization effort for contract technical workers at Google’s offices in Pittsburgh last year.

“As we’ve publicly indicated, we’re slowing our pace of hiring and investment, and as a result are not bringing on as many new people — full time and temporary — as we’d planned at the beginning of the year,” said Alex Krasov, a Google spokeswoman.

Ruth Porat, chief financial officer for Alphabet, told analysts last month that the company was cutting expenses by not hiring as many new employees as initially projected. She did not address contract or temp workers.

Google has taken some steps to help its temp and contract workers. In March, the company said it would extend the assignments of temp workers whose jobs were scheduled to end from March 20 to May 15 by 60 days.

The company also said it would continue to pay contract workers affected by office closures such as people who serve food in the company’s cafeterias. And it established a fund to allow contingent workers to take paid sick leave if they exhibit coronavirus symptoms or cannot come to work because they are quarantined.

Like many technology companies, Google depends on a large number of temps, vendors and contractors to perform a wide variety of jobs, including cafeteria workers, maintenance workers, recruiters, content moderators and software testers. For the company, these workers cost less than full-time employees, and Google has no long-term obligation to them, making it easy to hire them or eliminate their positions.

Last year, 10 Democratic senators called on Google to convert its temporary and contract workers to full-time employees, saying the company should stop its “anti-worker practices” and treat all of its workers equally.

Google pays staffing companies to find the workers and provide them with salaries and benefits as their employer. But Google interviews prospective candidates and signs off on hiring, deciding where they work, what they do and when to fire them.

When Google pulled the offers to prospective workers, the company told the staffing companies, which included firms like Accenture, Cognizant and Adecco, that “we’ll look to you to have the conversations with the individuals who won’t be onboarded.” Google said it was “hopeful” that the “agencies will be able to find other assignments” for the candidates.

It was not immediately clear which countries were most affected in the decision, but some of the workers are in the United States, India and the Philippines. This was the second wave of rescinded job offers for temps and contract workers. Google had pulled offers for several dozen temp workers in April.

Joli Holland was one of the candidates whose job offers was rescinded in mid-April. She was working as a lead teller at Wells Fargo when Adecco contacted her about a recruiter position working at Google in Mountain View, California. After a few rounds of interviews, she was offered the position with a start date of March 23.

She was hopeful that she would get her foot in the door with a temporary job and land a full-time position at Google. Before she gave her two-week notice to Wells Fargo, she checked with Adecco about whether the job at Google was safe given the growing concerns about the coronavirus. Holland said she was assured that everything “should be fine.”

Another candidate whose offer was rescinded expressed similar concerns to another recruiter at Adecco. This person, who asked not to be identified because they still wanted to work at Google and were worried about being blacklisted for speaking out, said the recruiter said “Google always does the right thing, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Mary Beth Waddill, a spokeswoman for Adecco, said the company did not intend to mislead anyone about their career prospects, “especially given the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our standard practice is to advise in writing that placement on assignment is not guaranteed.”

A few days before Holland was set to start, she was told that her start date at Google would be pushed back to April 6. Then it was postponed to April 13 and again to April 20, a Monday. On the Friday before she was set to begin her job, Holland said she was told that the company was rescinding all temp worker offers. She did not receive any money while she waited to start at Google, nor did she get any severance.

“I’m disappointed, because not a lot of people are hiring right now,” she said. She had not filed for unemployment because she left her last job voluntarily. Still, Holland said she still hoped to work for Google because it would still be a great opportunity.

“I am disappointed, but it hasn’t completely soured me on the company,” she said. “I’d still like to work there.”

-Daisuke Wakabayashi, The New York Times-

US layoffs surpass 38.6 million as lawmakers debate stimulus

WASHINGTON- Job losses in the United States are slowing but totaled an unheard-of 38.6 million since the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns began, while officials debate what additional steps will be needed to rescue the beleaguered economy.

Another 2.43 million Americans were put out of work last week, fewer than the previous week but still among the highest figures on record, according to the latest Labor Department data released Thursday.

Meanwhile, other reports showed US housing sales collapsed last month, while manufacturing continues to decline.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits appeared to have passed the peak hit in late March, but economists say joblessness is likely worse than the figures indicate since many people do not qualify for traditional aid.

"The dramatic spike in unemployment claims is trending down, but it still completely overshadows any precedent," Kate Bahn, director of Labor Market Policy at the Center for Equitable Growth, said on Twitter, noting that the latest number was three times higher than the record prior to the pandemic.

Democrats in Congress are calling for the Republican-controlled Senate to pass a $3.3 trillion spending measure approved by the House of Representatives last week to revitalize the economy, but President Donald Trump's administration has rejected the bill as he encourages more state government to loosen the lockdowns.

"We did the right thing, but we now want to get going... you'll break the country if you don't," he told African American leaders in a visit to Michigan, a key election battleground state.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed 93,406 people in the US and infected nearly 1.6 million others, according to John Hopkins University, despite widespread business shutdowns from mid-March to stop the virus's spread.

PARTISANS SPLIT

Weekly jobless claims declined but they remain well above any week during the 2008 global financial crisis and are more in line with job losses in the Great Depression last century.

"Forget the idea that they are coming down. If anyone thinks that 2.5 million new claims is anything but disastrous, they are deluding themselves," economist Joel Naroff said, warning that the economy is in the midst of a second round of layoffs.

The latest weekly number also does not include the 2.22 million people who applied for a federal program aimed at contractors and self-employed workers who would not normally qualify for traditional benefits.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed to approve the Heroes Act that includes $1 trillion for state and local governments, funds for hospitals, hazard pay for health workers, relief for devastated small businesses, and another round of cash disbursements to hard-hit US families -- measures many economists have been calling for.

But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, though acknowledging a "strong likelihood" additional aid will be needed, rejected Pelosi's effort as "obviously" partisan, and said officials will need to take some time to consider the next steps.

Pelosi fired back at Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for dragging their feet.

"Instead of telling laid-off workers to pause, Leader McConnell and the Senate GOP need to come to the negotiating table to help deliver the relief to protect lives and livelihoods."

HOME SALES PLUNGE

The Federal Reserve has rolled out trillions in new liquidity to ensure markets continued to function through the downturn, but the central bank's Chair Jerome Powell said additional government spending is necessary to spur a recovery.

During a video conference with community leaders across the country, Powell repeated earlier warnings of unprecedented economic uncertainty, saying "questions only the virus can answer complicate the outlook."

Adding to the building picture of the damage, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said existing home sales -- a key sector in the world's largest economy -- plummeted in April, the first full month the lockdowns were in effect.

But realtors and economists are optimistic they will pick up quickly as the economy reopens due to very low borrowing rates.

Sales plunged 17.8 percent last month, dropping in all parts of the country, with sales in western states hit hardest, falling 25 percent compared to March.

NAR's Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said home sales have been "temporarily disrupted" by the pandemic but pointed to a year-on-year price increase of 7.4 percent as evidence that "listings that are on the market are still attracting buyers."

A Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank monthly report released Thursday showed a slight improvement in manufacturing activity in the region the bank covers, though it was rebounding from a 40-year low in April.

Agence France-Presse

US suffers biggest job losses in history amid coronavirus

With shops and factories closed nationwide due to the coronavirus pandemic, nearly all of the jobs created in the US economy in the last decade were wiped out in a single month.

An unprecedented 20.5 million jobs were destroyed in April in the world's largest economy, the biggest amount ever recorded, the Labor Department said in a report released Friday, the first to capture the impact of a full month of the lockdowns.

That drove the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent from 4.4 percent in March -- the highest level since the Great Depression of the last century.

The United States is home to the world's largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 75,000 fatalities and 1.2 million cases reported as of Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The economic damage from the lockdowns to contain the virus has been swift and stunning, despite nearly $3 trillion in financial aid approved by Congress, and there is growing fear that the temporary layoffs will become permanent since some companies won't survive.

Taken together, 21.4 million jobs were destroyed in March and April, nearly equal to the 23 million positions created during the economy's long expansion from February 2010 to February 2020.

All major industry sectors felt the pain.

Leisure and hospitality was the first sector hit and the one bearing the brunt of the impact of the lockdowns, shedding 7.7 million jobs, while manufacturing eliminated 1.3 million positions.

Those two sectors alone added up to more than the 8.6 million total jobs lost in the two years of the global financial crisis.

As bad as the data was, the real picture likely is much worse. The Labor Department noted the unemployment rate would have been closer to 20 percent, but some workers were misclassified as employed when they actually had been laid off because of COVID-19.

- Not a good future -

The pandemic has caused many employees to leave the workforce altogether, while others have been forced from full-time jobs into part-time work.

The measure of the labor force as a share of the total population sunk to 51.3 percent, its lowest in history, meaning nearly half of working-age Americans are not employed.

Minorities were hit particularly hard: African American unemployment spiked to 16.7 percent from 6.7 percent in March, while the rate for Hispanics was 18.9 percent, more than triple last month.

President Donald Trump said Friday the numbers were expected, and promised: "I'll bring it back."

"I think it's going to come back blazing," he told reporters on the economy.

But 57-year-old Sandra Mahesh, who recently lost her job in Maryland and had her unemployment benefits cut off, is not hopeful.

"I don't see a good future with America right now," she told AFP.

While Trump proclaimed on Fox News earlier Friday that "even the Democrats aren't blaming me" for the job losses, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden lambasted him for his handling of the crisis.

"Donald Trump utterly failed to prepare for this pandemic and delayed in taking the necessary steps to safeguard our nation against the near-worst-case economic scenario we are now living," Biden said in a statement.

- Low-wage destruction -

Echoing the fears of many economists over the fates of small businesses, Biden said, "A lot of them won't open again because they do not have a cushion due to three years of Trump's policies that reward the biggest companies."

The report showed average wages rose, but economists say that is merely another sign of catastrophe.

"In April, the job losses were disproportionately concentrated in relatively low-wage sectors like leisure and recreation," Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said in an analysis.

A University of Chicago study based on the huge ADP private payrolls database found that low-wage workers saw employment decline by 35 percent, a rate three times as high as the nine percent decline seen by top earners.

Job losses at the bottom of the wage scale account for one third of the total decline, the authors found.

"The beginning of this likely 'Pandemic Recession' is unprecedented," co-author John Grigsby said on Twitter.

"Labor market declines (are) concentrated among low-income workers and small firms, precisely those that are unlikely to have savings to smooth over shock."

Agence France-Presse

Canada loses most jobs ever due to pandemic; unemployment hits 13%

Canada shed three million jobs in the last two months due to the coronavirus lockdown, causing the unemployment rate to shoot up to 13 percent in April, the government reported Friday.

That rate more than doubled, following a relatively small increase the previous month when restrictions started to be put in place, its statistical agency said.

The new rate is second only to the 13.1 percent observed during a recession in 1982, but lower than analysts had forecast.

Statistics Canada said the figure would have been much higher had it included a large number of people who wanted to work but could not job-hunt "presumably due to ongoing business closures and very limited opportunities to find new work." 

Many also worked fewer hours, the agency said.

All of this has led to 6.7 million Canadians applying for unemployment benefits or government aid, and just over one in five Canadian households reporting difficulties meeting financial obligations.

- 'Nothing to cheer about' -

Although worst-case projections failed to materialize, "when you're rounding the number of jobs lost to the nearest million, there's nothing to cheer about," commented CIBC analyst Avery Shenfeld.

The employment declines over the past two months were observed in all provinces, but Quebec -- which has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities -- led all of them with 821,000 jobs lost.

Employment also dropped sharply in Canada's three largest cities -- Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Youths aged 15-24, recent immigrants, low-wage workers and those with the least job security -- temporary or non-unionized, for example -- suffered the most job losses.

Statistics Canada noted, however, that most of the newly unemployed were temporarily laid off, meaning they could return to work when restrictions are lifted.

In March, it said, almost all job losses were observed in the services sector, whereas the following month goods-producing industries saw proportionally larger losses, led by construction and manufacturing.

Within the services sector, employment losses continued, led by wholesale and retail trade, and accommodation and food services.

Some sectors managed to avoid the carnage. Utilities, public administration, and finance, insurance and real estate, for example, were "relatively less affected by the COVID-19 economic shutdown," said Statistics Canada.

Large firms and institutions appeared to have been able to keep workers on the job better than small businesses.

An additional 3.3 million Canadians also worked from home.

After previous downturns, services jobs returned "relatively quickly," or within four months, to pre-downturn levels.

Workers in goods-producing industries were not as lucky, with recoveries from recessions in 1981-1982 and 1990-1992, and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, taking more than six and 10 years, respectively.

This time, said Statistic Canada, "as economic activity resumes industry by industry following the COVID-19 economic shutdown, the time required for recovery will be a critical question."

Agence France-Presse

Macy's closing 125 stores, cutting 2,000 jobs

WASHINGTON — Iconic American department store chain Macy's will shutter 125 stores and slash 2,000 jobs over the next three years as part of a plan to shore up its financial position, the company announced Tuesday.

Like other retailers, Macy's has struggled with the decline of the once-dominant American shopping mall, as well as competition from online behemoth Amazon.

The department store said it expects the "Polaris" strategy to generate annual gross savings of approximately $1.5 billion once it is fully implemented by the end of 2022, with savings of approximately $600 million this year.

"We are confident in our Polaris strategy, and we have the resources required to return Macy's, Inc. to sustainable, profitable growth," Macy's CEO and chairman Jeff Gennette said in a statement. 

"We will focus our resources on the healthy parts of our business, directly address the unhealthy parts of the business and explore new revenue streams."

The company will close approximately 125 of its "least productive" stores over the next three years, which account for $1.4 billion in annual sales. This includes 30 stores already in the process of closure, the statement said.

In addition, the New York office will become the company's sole corporate headquarters, and the chain will close its San Francisco and Cincinnati offices.

The plan calls for "streamlining its organization with a net reduction in its corporate and support function headcount of 9 percent, or approximately 2,000 positions," the company said.

The savings generated by the program will be invested in improving the digital business and "off-mall expansion," and new, smaller store formats, among other things.

The cost of the restructuring is expected to total approximately $450 million to $490 million, the majority of which will be recorded in 2019, the statement said.

Agence France-Presse 

US unemployment falls to 50-year low of 3.5 pct in September

WASHINGTON - America's jobless rate tumbled in September to its lowest level in 50 years, according to government data released Friday, delighting the White House even though it may not assuage recession fears as President Donald Trump's trade wars persist.

Meanwhile, with a strong dollar and slowing global economy, the US trade deficit widened in August, as the trade conflicts ate into export growth.

Trump immediately cheered the good jobs data, claiming his economic record should shield him from efforts to impeach him, and shortly after said a trade deal with China was possible soon.

But there was less-than-stellar news as well: The pace of job creation was the slowest in four months and wages fell, while the manufacturing workforce also shrank for the second time this year.

Wall Street was reassured by the news, with the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average ending the day with a gain of 1.4 percent.

Unemployment fell two-tenths of a point to 3.5 percent, matching the rate last recorded in December 1969, and well below what analysts had forecast, according to the Labor Department.

Employers added a total of 136,000 net new positions, which was below expectations, with notable slowdowns in education, government, finance and business services.

The August job gain was revised up sharply to 168,000, nearly 40,000 more than originally reported.

But signs of the slowdown were unambiguous: At 157,000, the average for the last three months is now well below the 223,000 a month recorded during 2018.

"Breaking News: Unemployment Rate, at 3.5%, drops to a 50 YEAR LOW. Wow America, lets impeach your President (even though he did nothing wrong!)," Trump tweeted.

The hotly anticipated jobs report also landed amid a raft of worrisome economic data showing Trump's trade wars have put a dent in the business environment and suggesting hiring should slow in the coming months.

But Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said Friday that although the economy "faces some risks, overall it is... in a good place."

The Fed's job "is to keep it there as long as possible," he said.

Average hourly wages fell by a penny to $28.09 last month, well below economists' expectations, putting an end to a year-long string of steady gains and limiting consumers' spending power in the coming months.

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Despite the slight drop in the month, Trump hailed the increase in wages over the past 12 months.

"Wages are up by almost 3 percent. That's a fantastic increase for everybody out there working. We're very happy about those numbers," Trump told reporters at the White House.

But meanwhile the mining sector added no workers after three straight months of layoffs, and the auto sector shed workers for the fourth month in a row.

"Job growth is set to slow much further," Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a note to clients.

"This is as good as it's likely to get until the trade war is resolved."

But given the dwindling supply of workers in the US economy, some groups continue to benefit: Unemployment among Hispanics fell to its lowest level since records began in 1973.

And for workers without a high school diploma, the jobless rate fell to the lowest since records began in 1992.

The latest data did not reflect the nationwide strike launched last month by General Motors employees, who walked off the job the week after the survey for the September jobs report was conducted.

EXPORTS SLOW

In a separate report also released Friday, the Commerce Department said the yawning US trade deficit rose by nearly $1 billion in August as weakening foreign demand and the churning trade conflict ate into US export growth.

However, Trump said there is a "very good chance" to reach a trade deal with China soon.

"Right now we're in a very important stage in terms of possibly making a deal. If we make it, it will be the biggest trade deal ever made," Trump said.

But the unexpected trade deficit increase could weigh on GDP calculations for the third quarter, with a global economic slowdown expected to weaken US exports while the strong US dollar has fueled imports.

As a result, the US trade balance crept 1.6 percent higher to $54.9 billion for the month, surpassing economists' expectations.

Imports increased 0.5 percent, while exports rose 0.2 percent, rising more slowly than in July.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Google's reliance on contractuals challenges dream employer image

SAN FRANCISCO — Mindy Cruz had an offer for a full-time position at another big tech company when she accepted a temporary job as a recruiter at Google in 2017. The pay was less and the benefits were not as good, but it was one step closer to her dream of becoming a Google employee.

Cruz became one of Google’s many temps and contractors — a shadow workforce that now outnumbers the company’s full-time employees. But she never made the jump to full time. She was swiftly fired after a Google manager, whom she said had harassed her for months, told the temp agency that had hired her that he wanted her gone.

High-tech companies have long promoted the idea that they are egalitarian, idyllic workplaces. And Google, perhaps more than any other, has represented that image, with a reputation for enviable salaries and benefits and lavish perks.

But the company’s increasing reliance on temps and contractors has some Google employees wondering if management is undermining its carefully crafted culture. As of March, Google worked with roughly 121,000 temps and contractors around the world, compared with 102,000 full-time employees, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.

Though they often work side by side with full-timers, Google temps are usually employed by outside agencies. They make less money, have different benefits plans and have no paid vacation time in the United States, according to more than a dozen current and former Google temp and contract workers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements.

Better treatment for those workers was one of the demands made by organizers of a Google employee walkout last year to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment complaints.

“It’s time to end the two-tier system that treats some workers as expendable,” the walkout organizers wrote on Twitter in March.

When Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, did not respond to those demands, a group of anonymous contractors sent an open letter demanding equal pay and better opportunities for advancement.

In April, hundreds of Google employees signed another letter protesting the dismissal of about 80 percent of a 43-person team of contingent workers working on the company’s artificial intelligence assistant.

In response, Google said it was changing a number of its policies to improve conditions for its temps and contractors.

The reliance on temporary help has generated more controversy inside Google than it has at other big tech outfits, but the practice is common in Silicon Valley. Contingent labor accounts for 40 percent to 50 percent of the workers at most technology firms, according to estimates by OnContracting, a site that helps people find tech contracting positions.

OnContracting estimates that a technology company can save $100,000 a year on average per American job by using a contractor instead of a full-time employee.

“It’s creating a caste system inside companies,” said Pradeep Chauhan, who runs OnContracting.

In statements to The Times, Google did not directly address concerns that it had created a two-tiered workforce, but said it did not hire contractors simply to save money.

Eileen Naughton, Google’s vice president of people operations, said that if a contingent worker “is not having a good experience, we provide lots of ways to report complaints or express concerns.”

She added, “We investigate, we hold individuals to account and we work to make things right for any person impacted.”

OUT OF THE LOOP

When Google became a public company in 2004, its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wrote that they believed in rewarding employees with unusual benefits because “our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything.”

But not everyone doing work for Google over the years has been a Googler. The company has been using temps and contractors since its early years in projects like scanning books for online search. According to one former Google employee, temps and contractors accounted for about a third of the workforce about a decade ago, and that share has steadily climbed.

Google’s contractors handle a range of jobs, from content moderation to software testing. Their hourly pay varies, from $16 per hour for an entry-level content reviewer to $125 per hour for a top-shelf software developer.

Google usually pays staffing companies, which find the workers and provide them with salaries and benefits as their employer.

But the current and former contract and temp workers, as well as 4 Google employees, said Google was the employer in all but name. It decides what jobs they do, dictates where and what hours they work, and often decides if and when to fire them.

Google’s contractors are barred from company events like holiday parties and all-hands meetings. They are not permitted to look at internal job postings or attend company job fairs.

In some instances, email messages about workplace security concerns that went out to full-time staff members were not shared with contract workers even though they worked in the same offices, the contractors and temps told The Times.

In their letter to Pichai, the temp workers said the company sent security updates only to full-time employees during a shooting at YouTube’s offices last year, leaving contractors “defenseless in the line of fire.” They were also barred from a meeting the next day to discuss the attack.

Andrea Faville, a YouTube spokeswoman, said that the exclusion had been an oversight and that contractors had been invited to another companywide meeting later that week. She said all security updates went out to all staff members, including contractors and temps, although two contractors working at YouTube said they had not received notices.

TEMPS WITH DOCTORATES

Google has relied on temporary workers even when the work has become more permanent.

When the company started a research project code-named Pygmalion in 2014 to improve its speech-recognition technology, it hired temporary employees — many of whom had doctorates in linguistics — to help annotate and structure data so Google’s computers could better understand what people were saying, according to five people familiar with the project.

The team grew to about 250, and the majority were contractors. Some contractors worked two years on the project, which is Google’s limit, and took a six-month break before returning in a similar role.

As the project grew, Google managers pressed contractors to do more. In a complaint to the human resources department, one full-time employee said project leaders pressured contractors to work longer hours than stated in their contracts without reporting overtime. The project leaders made subtle promises of conversion to full-time status, two of the employees said.

Google said it had learned of a possible violation in February and immediately opened an investigation, which is still continuing, into unpaid overtime. The company said it instructed employees not to promise temps future employment.

“Our policy is clear that all temporary workers must be paid for any overtime worked,” Naughton said. “If we find that anyone isn’t properly paid, we make sure they are compensated appropriately and take action against any Google employee who violates this policy.”

States and the federal government are trying to define the distinction between contractors and employees more clearly. The difference usually depends on how much control the company exercises over the worker. That is based on certain criteria, like whether the company has the power to hire or fire the employee, or supervise and control work schedules or conditions of employment. As a result, companies keep contingent workers at arm’s length.

In response to the issues with its temp workforce, Google is both trying to improve their treatment and distancing itself from their management.

Last month, Google said it would require staffing agencies to provide contract and temp workers with comprehensive health care, paid parental leave and an hourly minimum wage of $15.

Many contractors who reported to a Google employee are now being managed by another contractor, who is the only one permitted to speak to full-time employees, 3 of the workers said. And Google is moving groups of contractors out of some offices in the United States and into separate buildings owned by Google but mostly managed by outside contractors.

When Cruz, the temp recruiter, worked in a Google office in Mountain View, California, she sat with permanent recruiters and used a Google email address. Her manager, a Google employee, said he expected to convert her to full-time status after a year as long as she met her hiring quotas, which she did.

That is why she did not say anything when her manager started asking her out. She repeatedly rebuffed him, she said, and his advances turned to harassment. He once invited her to a team outing at a winery that turned out to be just the two of them. That night, he tried to kiss her and put his hand up her dress.

“I had heard that a lot of times when you say something to your recruiting agency, they just take you out of the situation and put you somewhere else,” Cruz said. “And I didn’t want my job to go away.”

She said she had considered reporting a claim when she suspected her manager was looking for a way to fire her. But she was fired in February before she had a chance. Her account was detailed in legal documents seen by The Times. Cruz’s sister, Kristi Beck, said Cruz had told her about the harassment while it had been going on.

Cruz’s agency, Search Wizards of Sarasota, Florida, told her that Google was dissatisfied with her work. She was told that the dismissal was unusual, but that there wasn’t much the agency could do because her manager wanted her gone.

Miranda Hinshaw, chief executive of Search Wizards, said the company did not “discuss past or present employees/contractors with any third party.”

Cruz filed a complaint to Google a month later. Google said it had fired the manager in April after it investigated.

Cruz agreed to a settlement in mediation after months of proceedings. (Google said the matter was now resolved.) But one part of the settlement still gnaws at her: She is not allowed to work for Google again.

“It feels so unfair,” she said. “They took away this very big opportunity.”


2019 New York Times News Service

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Modi kept his job, Indians worry about theirs

NEW DELHI -- Asad Ahmed, one of about 1.2 million young Indians entering the cutthroat job market each month, diligently scribbles notes at a computer class in New Delhi.

While nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a new 5-year term promising to step up his campaign for a "new India", 18-year-old Ahmed is pessimistic about getting a new job.

"There are so many people in Delhi and the competition is intense," said Ahmed, dressed like the other students in a black-and-white uniform at the 3-month community course run in a police station in Old Delhi.

"I know this stint may not be enough for me to get a job but I am trying my best."

Modi came to power in 2014 promising jobs, but delivering on that has been a challenge.

And as soon as the election euphoria settles, Modi's government will have to find ways to boost investment and revive manufacturing to create new jobs.

Like Ahmed, most of the other 60 students at the government-sponsored "skill development" classes at the Old Delhi police station, all from poor families, were also apprehensive. 

Nudrat Akram, 19, signed up for the course because her family could not afford to pay for higher education.

"I want a job in the retail sector where I can earn 10,000 rupees ($143) a month," Akram said, as she practised speaking English with pretend customers.

MORE JOBS, MORE DEBT 

India's conservative prime minister came to power in 2014 on a pro-business platform, promising to create 10 million jobs a year.

The world's fastest-growing major economy has grown about 7 percent a year since, but jobs have been elusive.

The promise was barely mentioned in Modi's triumphant re-election campaign.

Nearly two-thirds of India's 1.3 billion population are of working age, between 15 and 64, but an increasing number are in the unemployed list.

No official data has been released for more than two years but a recent leaked report -- denied by the government -- put the unemployment rate at a 45-year high of 6.1 percent.

The Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private research firm, estimates the jobless rate rose to 7.6 percent in April.

"The economy is going to be a huge problem. The government simply cannot create jobs for millions entering the workforce," said political analyst Parsa Venkateshwar Rao.

"Modi will rely on businesses but they are also struggling so he has a real problem on his hands."

'NOT EASY TO SURVIVE' 

Unemployment is particularly dire for women.

A Deloitte consultancy report in March said female labor force participation fell to 26 percent in 2018 from 36 percent in 2005 because of poor education and socio-economic barriers.

The manifesto of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised a $1.4-trillion infrastructure boost to create jobs if it won the election. It offered metro trains for 50 cities and to double the national highway network.

But analysts say the government, which has drastically increased its debt over the past five years, will have to borrow huge new amounts to pay for the works.

In 2015, Modi launched a Skill India program aiming to train 500 million people by 2022. But the results have been mixed.

According to 2018 data, only a quarter of people who joined the scheme found jobs.

"The Skill India mission has not had as much success as say the highway program," said economist Arvind Virmani.

"The real crisis is about job skills and basic education."

India's rural jobs guarantee program offers work to about 70 million people at a minimum wage for 100 days a year, but there is no equivalent for the growing numbers of urban youth.

Experts say the government must consider an urban employment guarantee scheme in order to reap the true benefit of its economic growth.

At the Delhi classes, 18-year-old Sehar, who uses one name, is worried about helping her poor family, including 4 younger sisters.

Her father, who works at a hospital, is the only earner. 

"I am the eldest and I want to help my family, it's not easy to survive in this city." 

source: news.abs-cbn.com