Unemployment Benefit Rolls in U.S. Soar to Record

[TomClash]

Source: Bloomberg

Unemployment Benefit Rolls in U.S. Soar to Record (Update1)

By Courtney Schlisserman

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits soared to a record, as companies slash jobs to lower costs in a deepening recession.

Continuing claims for benefits rose to 4.776 million in the week ended Jan. 17, the highest since record-keeping started in 1967, the Labor Department said today in Washington. First-time filings increased 3,000 to 588,000 in the week ended Jan. 24.

Thousands of job cuts announced earlier this week at Caterpillar Inc., Target Corp. and other companies suggest unemployment may climb further. Federal Reserve policy makers yesterday voted to keep the central bank’s target interest rate at zero to 0.25 percent and noted employment is among the measures that have declined “steeply.”

“The job market is pretty awful,” William Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “You’ve got job losses feeding into sales losses.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqc_bpAZTgqE&refer=home

[Crazy Dave]

1. Even the businesses still making profits don't want to help or hang tight

Yes, even the ones like Microsoft who is still making enormous net profits are laying people off because their forecasted profit wasn't achieved. Where my wife works, a couple of months ago they were so busy she had to work overtime occasionally but since the new business trend is laying people off, cutting wages or reducing hours, her boss told her and others they were cutting all lower level employees work week by ten hours "because we can and if nobody likes it they can quit because we have 200 applications".

That was a month and a half ago and now they've lost two major clients who went to their competitors because with the reduced hours it caused delivery and shipping delays. Before a customer might have waited two to four hours for an item to be delivered or shipped, when they cut everyones hours the customers started having to wait eight hours or the next day to get their orders.

Now that they'll lost customers, some gone for good, work is slow for the first time in eight years that my wife has worked there and they're laying people off and reducing her hours even more.