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Tag: Unemployment

  • You’ve been laid off. Here’s what to post on social media, and what to leave out | CNN Business

    You’ve been laid off. Here’s what to post on social media, and what to leave out | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    If ever you’ve been swept up in a mass layoff, among the many unwelcome tasks on your new to-do list is how and when to tell people you lost your job.

    Often, the go-to place to alert your professional network has been social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and others.

    But the way you deliver the message matters if your goal is to set yourself up well for new opportunities.

    Take a little time before posting: You don’t need to go public right away.

    “Take time to digest the fact that you no longer have a job,” said career coach Aneri Desai, who works primarily with immigrants. “Take your time to understand your situation.”

    If you’re upset, tell your partner, your friend or your pillow. Just don’t post your fury or bitterness online.

    Consider a “soft” announcement first: If you’re not sure yet what you’re going to do — or even whether you want to stay in the same career — you can put up an initial “soft” post just to let people know your job was eliminated, Desai noted. It’s okay to say “Not sure yet what my next move will be, but stay tuned. I will reach out when I’m clearer on next steps.”

    This can be an especially useful move if your company’s layoffs are making headlines and you’re being bombarded with messages from friends and colleagues asking if you were affected.

    Keep it short: Whether you’ve worked at a place for five years or 25 years, you could probably write a book about your experiences.

    But please don’t. Shorter is best — a few paragraphs at most. “Don’t use all the characters you can. You want people to read it,” said career coach Marlo Lyons, author of “Wanted: A New Career.”

    Gratitude is good, but also focus on your accomplishments: If genuine, express appreciation for your mentors and colleagues, and the opportunities you had at your job. But don’t spend most of your post thanking people, Desai said.

    “So many people put the spotlight on ‘how lucky I was to work with this team’ but they miss out on giving credit to themselves,” Desai said. “Toot your horn.”

    By that, she means it’s important to note some of the big ways you added value to your company: for example, how you automated and expedited the claims process at your employer, making the experience easier and faster for the 50,000 clients the company served last year.

    Be specific about what you want and your skills: When you are ready to look for a new job and receive help from your network or hear from recruiters, your post should be “very explicit,” Lyons said.

    Detail the hard and soft skills you will bring to a new employer. Specify which field or set of related fields you want to be in ( like sales, account management, business development); what role titles you’re interested in (e.g., vice president-level positions, senior manager); whether you’d prefer to work remotely or hybrid; and any other details that will help people help you.

    Extend the reach of your post: You want as many people to see your post as possible.

    So you might tag it #openforwork, a hashtag often used on LinkedIn, Desai suggested.

    You also might tag people whom you are thanking in your post. But this may not be the right move for everyone. If there’s a risk you’ll leave out someone who has been especially helpful to you — or conversely, if you’re intentionally not tagging your current boss — “that may leave a negative impression,” Lyons said. In that case, better to reach out privately to the individuals you want to thank and instead invite anyone reading your post to “please comment for reach,” she suggested.

    Keep it upbeat: If you’re financially freaked out, don’t say so, Lyons said.

    You don’t want to give the impression that you’ll take the first job that comes alone.

    “Companies want you to want them — not just for you to take the job because you have to,” Lyons said. “It’s okay to say you’d like a job sooner rather than later. But be careful not to appear desperate.”

    Be consistent across platforms: Chances are you may announce your layoff on more than one social platform. So be consistent in your message. You don’t want to put out a very professional post on, say, LinkedIn but then launch an angry tweetstorm on Twitter.

    “[Before] someone goes to hire you,” Lyons said, “they will read your posts.”

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  • Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

    Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

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    The high-flying tech industry is facing a reckoning as the economy slows and customers pull back on spending.

    In the past month alone, tech companies have cut nearly 60,000 jobs, reversing a hiring spree that surged during the pandemic as millions of Americans moved their lives online. IBM was one of the latest to slash its headcount, announcing 3,900 layoffs in January, or less than 2% of its global workforce. 

    Even with the surge in layoffs, most tech companies are still vastly larger than they were three years ago. But industry analysts expect further industry cuts in 2023 as the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates as it hits the brakes on economic growth. 

    This year, “a major theme will be tech layoffs as Silicon Valley, after a decade of hyper growth, now comes to the reality of cost-cutting mode,” analysts at Wedbush said in a research note Friday.

    As for what that means for tech workers, it’s too soon to tell, experts say. Despite the cascade of layoff announcements, employment in the information sector rose through most of last year, dropping only in December. That suggests demand for talent remains strong enough that many laid-off tech employees will likely be able to find new jobs.

    “While layoffs from high-profile firms make the headlines, plenty of firms are desperate for more workers, especially tech workers. Those workers are in high demand from the auto industry to the Department of Veterans Affairs to not-for-profits,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

    “The labor market is still so tight that many tech workers, and workers with other skills, are snapped up well before they need to collect an unemployment check. And they are more likely to be snapped up by smaller firms, which have a much greater demand for workers than major corporations.

    The tech downturn is an anomaly amid a job market that remains the tightest in decades and has allowed many workers to command higher pay. Across the economy, announced layoffs last year fell to their second-lowest in 30 years of tracking by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, second only to 2021.

    But even as overall layoffs fell, tech layoffs rose, with a record 1 in 4 layoffs last year taking place in the tech sector.

    Here are the largest tech companies to announce cuts since 2022.

    Alphabet   

    The Google parent said on January 20 that it would let go of 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its 186,000-strong global workforce. The cuts apply “across Alphabet — product areas, functions, levels and regions,” CEO Sundar Pichai said.

    Pichai told employees that the Silicon Valley company simply hired too fast during the pandemic. 

    “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote in an email that was also posted on Alphabet’s corporate blog. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

    Amazon

    The e-commerce company is moving to cut about 18,000 positions, a downshift that began in November and that will continue into this year. That’s just a fraction of its 1.5 million-strong global workforce. 

    While the vast majority of the company’s employees work in its vast warehouse and logistics operation — which doubled in size during the pandemic — the cuts mostly affect white-collar employees in some of the company’s less profitable sectors, including the division responsible for its voice assistant, Alexa.

    Carvana

    The online car seller cut about 2,500 workers in May 2022, or 12% of its workforce. The company was widely criticized for its handling of the layoffs, many of which were done via Zoom and email. 

    The Phoenix-based company, which delivers new and used cars to buyers, blamed the cuts on an “automotive recession.”

    Coinbase

    The cryptocurrency trading platform cut roughly 20% of its workforce, or about 950 jobs, in January. It’s the second round of layoffs in less than a year, with 1,100 workers losing their jobs in June.

    Dell

    The computer company in February announced it would slash 5% of its workforce due to a “challenging global economic environment.” The Texas-based company has about 133,000 employees, according to its most recent annual report, putting the layoffs on track to eliminate about 6,600 jobs.

    eBay

    The online marketplace said in February it would cut 500 jobs, or about 4% of its global workforce, according to an internal email included with a securities filing.

    The layoffs allow the company “to invest and create new roles in high-potential areas,” CEO Jamie Iannone said in the message. The will also “[simplify] our structure to make decisions more effectively and with more speed,” he said.

    IBM

    The company plans to cut about 3,900 workers, its chief financial officer told Bloomberg in January. The cuts amount to about 1.5% of the company’s global workforce, and come even as IBM posted better-than-expected revenue for the most recent quarter.

    The Armonk, New York-based firm will continue hiring in what its financial officer called “higher-growth areas.” IBM last year said it would invest tens of billions of dollars across New York’s Hudson Valley to spur semiconductor manufacturing.

    Lyft

    The ride-hailing service said in November it was cutting 13% of its workforce, almost 700 employees. The layoffs affect its corporate employees, since Lyft’s army of drivers are considered independent businesses, not employees of the transportation company. 

    Meta

    The parent company of Facebook in November laid off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce. Meta has struggled more than many tech companies this year; its user base has shrunk, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put billions of dollars into building what he calls the “metaverse,” to the consternation of its investors. The company’s stock has lost two-thirds of its value since peaking in August 2021.

    Microsoft

    The software company in January said it would cut about 10,000 jobs, almost 5% of its workforce, as it refocuses its strategy on artificial intelligence and away from hardware. In the two years ending in June 2022, Microsoft had expanded from 163,000 workers to 221,000.

    PayPal

    The digital payments company said in January it was cutting 2,000 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce, as it contends with what it called “the challenging macro-economic environment.”

    The San Jose, California-based company is the parent of PayPal is the parent of payment apps Venmo and Xoom and the coupon service Honey, among other brands. PayPal said the cuts would affect different brands unequally, although it did not specify further.

    Robinhood

    The company, whose app helped attract a new generation of investors to the market, announced in August that it would reduce its headcount by 23%, or approximately 780 people. That’s the second round of recent layoffs for the company, which last year cut 9% of its workforce.

    Salesforce

    The company cut 10% of its workforce, or about 7,300 employees, in January. It also said it was closing some offices, citing a “challenging” environment and lower customer spending. 

    Snap

    The parent company of social media platform Snapchat said in August that it was letting go of 20% of its staff. Snap’s staff has grown to more than 5,600 employees in recent years, meaning that, even after laying off more than 1,000 people, Snap’s staff would be larger than it was a year earlier.

    Spotify

    The music streaming service said in January it was cutting 6% of its workforce, or roughly 580 jobs, as part of a push to make the company more efficient. In 2022, Spotify’s operating costs grew twice as fast as its revenue, CEO Daniel Ek said, a pace he called “unsustainable.”

    “We still spend far too much time syncing on slightly different strategies, which slows us down,” CEO Daniel Elk said in a January 23 letter to employees posted on the company’s site. “And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance.”

    Stripe

    The payment processor announced layoffs of roughly 1,000 workers in November,  amounting to 14% of its workforce. In an email to employees posted on Stripe’s website, CEO Patrick Collison said the company expected “leaner times” amid worsening economic conditions.

    Twitter

    About half of the social media platform’s staff of 7,500 was let go after the billionaire CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, acquired the service in October. An unknown number have left, with some objecting to the new ownership and Musk’s demand for an “extremely hardcore” attitude.

    Wayfair

    The online shopping company announced in January that it would cut 1,750 workers, or about 10% of its global employees, as it adjusts to falling consumer demand after the home-renovation boom of the pandemic. It’s the second round of layoffs for the Boston-based company, which cut 870 employees in August.

    CEO Niraj Shah said the company “simply grew too big.”

    “In hindsight, similar to our technology peers, we scaled our spend too quickly over the last few years,” Shah said in a statement.

    Zoom

    The video-conferencing company that surged early in the pandemic said it would lay off 1,300 “talented, hardworking colleagues” in early February. The cuts represent about 15% of Zoom’s workforce, according to a company blog.

    The company tripled in size in 2020 as white-collar workers shifted to remote environments, but its user growth then slowed dramatically.

    “We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably,” CEO Eric Yuan said in a post. “[T]he uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard – yet important – look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision,” he added.

    Yuan said he would forgo his entire salary and bonus for the current fiscal year, and that the executive team would see 20% salary cuts and no bonus. Yuan made $320,000 in compensation last year, and also holds about $3.3 million worth of Zoom stock, according to securities filings.

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  • Strong Jobs Report Underscores Just How Much Of A Loser Unemployed Man Is

    Strong Jobs Report Underscores Just How Much Of A Loser Unemployed Man Is

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  • EV maker Rivian to cut 6% of jobs amid price war | CNN Business

    EV maker Rivian to cut 6% of jobs amid price war | CNN Business

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    Reuters
     — 

    Rivian Automotive is laying off 6% of its workforce in an effort to cut costs as the EV maker, already grappling with falling cash reserves and a weak economy, braces for an industry-wide price war.

    The company is focusing resources on ramping up vehicle production and reaching profitability, Chief Executive R.J. Scaringe said in an email to employees on Wednesday announcing the job cuts. Reuters obtained a copy of the email.

    Layoffs at Rivian come amid falling EV prices kicked off by cuts made recently by Elon Musk-led Tesla

    (TSLA)     and Ford Motor Co.

    The price cuts by Tesla and Ford are expected to hurt EV upstarts such as Rivian, Lucid Group and British startup Arrival, which Monday said it would lay off half its staff.

    Despite a blockbuster initial public offering in November 2021, Rivian’s shares have fallen nearly 90% from their peak that month to Tuesday’s close. Rivian’s stock was trading down 4% on Nasdaq on Wednesday, paring some losses after news of the job cuts.

    “We must focus our resources on ramp and our path to profitability,” Scaringe said in the email, in which he apologized to employees for the necessity of the cuts.

    A Rivian spokesman confirmed the email was sent, but declined further comment.

    “They’re bleeding cash and would like to grow at a much faster rate, but they continue to struggle with their EV production ramp and have been unable to meaningfully drive down unit costs,” CFRA Research analyst Garrett Nelson said. “We think that is what’s behind this decision.”

    Rivian is focusing on ramping up production of its R1 trucks and EDV delivery vans for top shareholder Amazon.com and launching its R2 platform, he said. “The changes we are announcing today reflect this focused roadmap.”

    Irvine, California-based Rivian, which has about 14,000 employees, will let go of about 840 staff in a move that will not affect manufacturing operations at its plant in Normal, Illinois.

    Rivian, which has been losing money on every vehicle it builds, narrowly missed its full-year production target of 25,000 vehicles last year as it dealt with supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It had previously halved that target.

    To further conserve its cash, Rivian late last year shelved plans to build delivery vans in Europe with Mercedes. Rivian had earlier pushed back by a year to 2026 the planned launch of a smaller R2 vehicle family at the $5 billion plant it is building in Georgia.

    Last July, Rivian, which is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 28, laid off staff and suspended some programs as part of a broader restructuring.

    The company has a market valuation of $17.8 billion. Its cash and cash equivalents stood at $13.27 billion as of Sept. 30, 2022, down from over $18 billion a year earlier.

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  • U.S. added 517,000 jobs in January, blowing away forecasts

    U.S. added 517,000 jobs in January, blowing away forecasts

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    Employers added a stunning 517,000 jobs in January, indicating the job market remains red-hot despite rising layoffs in the technology industry and the Federal Reserve’s concerted push to slow economic growth.

    The figure, released on Friday by the Department of Labor, far outpaced economists’ expectations of about 185,000 jobs to be added in January.

    The nation’s unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4%, its lowest level since 1969.

    “The robust 517,000 gain in non-farm payrolls in January means that, despite most leading indicators of recession flashing red, the economy is clearly not as close to recession as we had suspected,” Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist with Capital Economics, said in a report.

    The government also revised estimates for 2022 to show that the economy added 568,000 more jobs than initially estimated.

    The leisure and hospitality sector led January’s payroll gains, adding 128,000 jobs, followed by professional and business services with 82,000 and health care with 79,000. The payroll gains were padded by a large gain in government jobs, partly due to an end to a strike at the University of California that had seen 48,000 walk off the job.

    Employment in the information sector, which contains many technology companies, fell by 5,000, equal to its decline in December. Many large tech companies have been cutting headcount, with high-profile layoffs at Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft.

    “We’re still in a very strong, tight labor market. The demand for workers remains high,” John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult, told CBS MoneyWatch before the job numbers were released.

    “While the tech sector does play an outsized role in driving productivity and corporate earnings, it remains a fairly small share of total employment,” he added. “For all these folks that are being fired, many of them are being re-hired, reabsorbed elsewhere.”

    Wage growth cooling

    Stock futures fell on the blockbuster figures. Futures for the Dow fell 0.5% while the S&P 500 slipped 1%. Futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 1.8% in off-hours trading after three technology bellweathers — Apple, Amazon and Alphabet — posted lackluster quarterly results after Thursday’s close.

    Wall Street is worried that the overly strong job growth will prompt the Federal Reserve to push interest rates higher, which hurts stocks. However, the Fed might be comforted by figures showing that wage growth decelerated in January, with average wages rising at an annual rate of 4.4%. 

    “Today’s report will also throw more kindling on the raging debate about how the Federal Reserve should think of the relationship between the labor market and inflation,” Nick Bunker, head of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said in an email. “If the central bank thinks that the low unemployment rate will necessarily push up wage growth and inflation moving forward, this strong report may darken the economic outlook. But if instead, Chair Powell and colleagues are heartened by tempering wage growth, then the odds that the economy can avoid a recession increase.”

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  • The US economy added a whopping 517,000 jobs in January | CNN Business

    The US economy added a whopping 517,000 jobs in January | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The US economy added an astonishing 517,000 jobs in January, showing that the labor market isn’t ready to cool down just yet.

    The unemployment rate fell to 3.4% from 3.5%, hitting a level not seen since May 1969 — two months before Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon — according to new data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Economists were expecting 185,000 jobs would be added last month, based on consensus estimates on Refinitiv.

    “With 517,000 new jobs added in January 2023 and the unemployment rate at 3.4%, this is a blockbuster report demonstrating that the labor market is more like a bullet train,” Becky Frankiewicz, president and chief commercial officer of ManpowerGroup, said Friday.

    The shockingly strong monthly jobs gain — a number that several economists cautioned was influenced by seasonal factors and is subject to future revisions — bucks a trend of five consecutive months of moderating job growth during the latter half of 2022.

    “The blowout 517,000 increase in total employment was almost certainly a function of seasonal noise and traditional churn in early-year job and wage environment and exaggerates what is already a robust trend in hiring,” Joe Brusuelas, principal and chief economist with RSM US, said in a statement.

    Nonetheless the juggernaut of a report may cause complications for the Federal Reserve, which has been trying to tame high inflation with higher interest rates, said Seema Shah, chief global strategist of Principal Asset Management.

    “Is [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell now wondering why he didn’t push back on the loosening in financial conditions?” Shah said in a statement. “It’s difficult to see how wage pressures can possibly soften sufficiently when jobs growth is as strong as this, and it’s even more difficult to see the Fed stop raising rates and entertain ideas of rate cuts when there is such explosive economic news coming in.”

    “The market is going to go through a roller coaster ride as it tries to decide if this is good or bad news. For now, though, looks like the US economy is doing absolutely fine,” she said.

    Still, the report also showed that wage growth moderated on an annual basis: Average hourly earnings fell 0.4 percentage points to 4.4% year over year. Monthly wage gains held steady at 0.3%.

    “It’s quite remarkable to see such a realignment of the employment picture coinciding with an easing of wage pressure,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate, said in an interview. “I think that might be part of this report that could help keep blood pressures down among Federal Reserve officials in the near term.”

    Additionally, average weekly hours jumped to 34.7 hours from 34.3, and employment in temporary help services rebounded after two months of declines, indicating further demand for labor, noted Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

    The report also showed an increase in the closely watched labor force participation rate to 62.4% from 62.3%. However, the increase in the share of people working or looking to work was a function of the BLS’ annual benchmark revisions to its household survey, one of two surveys that factor in to the monthly jobs report, noted PNC chief economist Gus Faucher.

    Had it not been for the revisions, that number would have been unchanged at 62.3%, he added.

    “The labor market is structurally tighter post-pandemic,” he said.

    Every January, the BLS makes revisions on its employment data to reflect updated population estimates and other factors.

    “On net, you saw stronger hiring in 2022 than what was initially reported,” said Sarah House, chief economist with Wells Fargo, told CNN.

    Average monthly job growth in 2022 was revised up from an average of 375,000 per month to 401,000, she said.

    Seasonality questions aside, other trends do align to support a strong January 2023 jobs report, Bankrate’s Hamrick said.

    “When you have a number of things lining up, almost like a crime scene investigation, it tends to lend some credibility to that question of believability,” he said of the surprising half-a-million-plus job gains. “What are the things that are lining up? The continued remarkably low level of jobless claims, the rise in job openings, the increase in labor force participation.”

    The gains were also widespread across industries, with job growth led by leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and health care, according to the BLS report.

    Industries that shed jobs last month included motor vehicles and parts (down 6,500 jobs), utilities (down 700 jobs) and information (down 5,000 jobs).

    In recent months, mass layoff announcements — especially from Big Tech — had spurred concern that the cutbacks were a harbinger of broader cutbacks to come.

    That doesn’t appear to be the case, considering jobless claims have remained historically low, job openings haven’t slipped and job gains remain strong, said Giacomo Santangelo, economist at Monster.

    “The news is talking about big names laying off, but we don’t really hear what happens at small firms with less than 200 employees,” he said. “What we’re seeing at Monster is a lot of firms, a majority of firms, are looking to hire.”

    The glut of available jobs — there are 1.9 open positions for every one job seeker — coupled with skills that are in high demand mean that workers are likely finding jobs quickly, he said. Additionally, those laid off by large technology firms likely received generous severance packages, so not all are filing for unemployment benefits.

    Friday’s report showed that the median duration of unemployment was 9.1 weeks, just a smidge above the pre-pandemic level of 8.9 weeks in February 2020.

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  • What to look for in Friday’s jobs report | CNN Business

    What to look for in Friday’s jobs report | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    A week that has been chock-full of economic data will be capped off Friday with the first US jobs report of 2023.

    Economists estimate that 185,000 positions were likely added in January, according to Refinitiv.

    That would be a considerable drop from the 504,000 jobs added in January 2022 and the 520,000 added in January 2021. It also would nearly match the 183,000 monthly average between 2010 and 2019, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

    And yet, while the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes have helped make a dent in inflation and resulted in slower economic activity without stark rises in unemployment, the full effects have yet to come, Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned Wednesday.

    “I would say it is a good thing the disinflation we have seen so far has not come at the expense of a weaker labor market,” Powell said in a news conference following the Fed’s first monetary policymaking meeting of the year. “But I would also say the inflationary process you see under way is really at an early stage.”

    America’s unemployment rate dipped back down in December to 3.5%, once again matching a 50-year low. It’s expected to tick up to 3.6% come Friday.

    Layoff announcements — led by large tech firms — are picking up steam: The 43,651 job cuts announced in December jumped to 102,943 in January, according to a new data released Thursday morning by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

    Still, those spikes in cutbacks haven’t become widespread. New data released Thursday by the Labor Department showed weekly initial jobless claims fell for the fourth time in five weeks, landing at 183,000, which is the lowest weekly total since April.

    “It’s a very interesting time where it’s really not clear whether what we’re seeing is a welcome, healthy rebalancing of the labor market — or a more worrying stall,” said Julia Pollak, senior economist with ZipRecruiter.

    Beyond the key headline indicators of payroll gains, unemployment and average hourly earnings, here are some other areas of the jobs report that Pollak and other economists will scrutinize when the January jobs report is released Friday morning.

    In December, the average working week for employees — including part-time workers — was 34.3 hours, according to BLS data.

    That’s down from the January 2021 high of 35 hours when the average workweek ballooned as workers were scarce and other employees were forced to pick up the slack and the extra shifts, Pollak said.

    “Typically, in good times, the workweek tends to be somewhere between 34.3 and 34.6 hours on average, and somehow it’s slowed all the way down to the bottom end of that range,” she said. “If it continues to deteriorate, that would suggest weakening demand for labor.”

    And usually, when demand gets weak, hiring stalls and layoffs and job losses follow, she said.

    As businesses recovered from the pandemic, they’ve increasingly relied on staffing agencies and contract employees. That sector started the pandemic with 2.9 million employees, plummeted to 1.9 million during the April 2020 trough, hit a record high of 3.56 million in July 2022 and has declined in each month since.

    “The recent decline in temp staffing is mostly the result of a healthy recovery in full-time, in-house hiring,” Pollak said. “But if it falls much below 3 million, I think that would be a warning sign as well.”

    Temporary and contract hiring can show where businesses expand and reduce their workforce at the margins, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo.

    “The fact that we see that paring down suggests that the demand backdrop is starting to soften, and maybe they just don’t see the reason to hire and expand as much as they had previously,” House said.

    The imbalance of labor demand and worker supply has been consistently highlighted by the Fed as a potential sticking point in its efforts to lower inflation. While Fed officials have noted that wages don’t appear to be driving inflation, they have expressed concern that a a low participation rate and the imbalance of worker supply and demand could cause pay to rise and, in turn, cause higher prices.

    The labor force participation rate inched up two-tenths of a percentage point in December to 62.3%. Although that came following three consecutive months of declines, the percentage of people working or actively looking for work hovered between 62.1% and 62.4% throughout 2022.

    Based on Wednesday’s labor turnover data, that gap grew wider in December: There were 11.01 million job openings, or 1.9 available jobs for every unemployed person that month.

    “Long Covid is pretty real, and there’s a sizable share of the population who continue to suffer health effects related to Covid that are preventing them from being able to work,” said John Leer, chief economist with Morning Consult. “Then there’s ongoing child care challenges; we’ve got a lot of folks who retired early; we’ve got limited immigration not where it was pre-pandemic.”

    Beyond that and the ongoing demographic shifts of Baby Boomers aging out of the workforce, there’s also possibly some “information asymmetry” that’s occurring, he said.

    “There are people outside of the labor market who aren’t working, and they just simply don’t know how needed they are right now,” he said. “And I think that’s a function of being a little removed. The world has changed pretty dramatically over the last two to three years, and it’s going to be difficult to show people that the skills they possess are needed right now.”

    The government’s monthly jobs report is scheduled to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday.

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  • Workers who remain after job cuts feel

    Workers who remain after job cuts feel

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    Mass layoffs like those roiling the tech industry affect more than the people who lose their jobs.

    Laid-off workers face practical challenges, such as staying financially afloat and securing new employment, as well as tough emotions, like feeling rejected. Meanwhile, those who remain after their colleagues are dismissed suffer from “survivor layoff guilt,” according to workplace psychologists and layoff survivors themselves.

    Susan Tyson, a marketing professional at a Texas-based software company, experienced this firsthand when her employer cut 25 of her roughly 7,000 colleagues last month. She was initially relieved that she wasn’t among those who lost their jobs. Then the regret started to sink in.

    “My first thought was, ‘Yippee, it’s not me!’ And my second thought was feeling very guilty that others lost their jobs and I didn’t,” Tyson told CBS MoneyWatch. “Many of the people that I worked with were let go and you just feel bad whenever that happens.”


    Google slashes 12,000 jobs, as tech sector layoffs continue

    02:49

    When fear kicks in

    Generally, survivor guilt sets in when some people, often arbitrarily, survive a traumatic event like combat, a natural disaster or job layoffs, while others are not as lucky. 

    In the workplace it can trigger anger, fear and anxiety among surviving employees, according to David Noer, a career consultant and author of “Healing The Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations.”

    In his experience, “people who survive layoffs tend to be less productive, more suspicious, more fearful and get less work done than was anticipated.”

    “I feel like I am on a short list”

    Some workers, like Tyson, wonder why they were spared and fear that they could lose their own jobs in a future round of cuts. 

    “I will be honest, I feel like I am on a short list and there are more cuts coming,” she said. “I don’t know what the logic of the layoffs was. I don’t understand it.” 

    Indeed, when employers aren’t transparent about why some workers were laid off and others weren’t, it can trigger deep feelings of insecurity. 

    “Employees who stay at a company after layoffs often feel anxiety around the future of the company,” said Kathryn Minshew, founder and CEO of The Muse, a career development platform. “It can be hard because most employers can’t or won’t comment on why certain people were chosen for layoffs and others weren’t.”

    “It may be related to budgets and company priorities, or performance. Or it could be somewhat random, and that ambiguity and lack of concrete information can be scary to people,” she added. 

    And in the era of remote work, employees sometimes don’t even know which of their colleagues were cut.

    “Sometimes you don’t even know who was let go until you send them an email and get an autoresponder back,” career transition coach Catherine Morgan told CBS MoneyWatch. 

    Psychological “tsunami effects”

    Wrestling with these complex emotions can erode layoff survivors’ trust in a company and, in turn, affect their productivity and performance on the job. 

    “It creates a lot of paranoia and because of that, you get a lot of distrust within an organization with these large-scale layoffs,” said workplace mental health expert Sally Spencer-Thomas. “Workers will question if the organization has their well-being at heart or if they are only looking at profit-making. So there are a lot of psychological tsunami effects that happen after a mass layoff.”

    Companies that proactively prepare their workforce for layoffs generally have better outcomes. Steps that can reassure staffers include communicating the reason for the layoffs and providing information about the company’s future. Leaders who “deal in feelings and emotions” and host “grieving and venting sessions” can keep workers’ confidence in a company intact, according to Noer.

    “That’s what gets divested in a transition like that. So taking action, steps to rebuild that trust, is essential,” Spencer-Thomas said. 


    “Career cushioning” a growing trend among workers as layoffs continue across U.S.

    03:56

    For layoff survivors, reaching out to former colleagues can go a long way toward making both parties feel better. “It’s important to keep in touch with people who have left. They need support as much as the people left behind. It feels good to know colleagues cared about you and want to stay friends with outgo, because that feeling of being booted out is so painful,” she added. 

    It can help mitigate feelings of guilt for having been spared one’s job, too, Minshew said. 

    “One of the most powerful things someone can do to cope with layoff survivor guilt is to actively reach out to and connect with and help those people at your company who were affected,” she said. “You can be a powerful asset to their job search by introducing them to other contacts and companies, offering to serve as a positive reference or be helpful in reviewing their resume or LinkedIn profile.”

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  • Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

    Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

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    The high-flying tech industry is facing a reckoning as the economy slows and customers pull back on spending.

    In the past month alone, tech companies have cut nearly 60,000 jobs, reversing a hiring spree that surged during the pandemic as millions of Americans moved their lives online. IBM was one of the latest to slash its headcount, announcing 3,900 layoffs in January, or less than 2% of its global workforce. 

    Even with the surge in layoffs, most tech companies are still vastly larger than they were three years ago. But industry analysts expect further industry cuts in 2023 as the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates as it hits the brakes on economic growth. 

    This year, “a major theme will be tech layoffs as Silicon Valley, after a decade of hyper growth, now comes to the reality of cost-cutting mode,” analysts at Wedbush said in a research note Friday.

    As for what that means for tech workers, it’s too soon to tell, experts say. Despite the cascade of layoff announcements, employment in the information sector rose through most of last year, dropping only in December. That suggests demand for talent remains strong enough that many laid-off tech employees will likely be able to find new jobs.

    “While layoffs from high-profile firms make the headlines, plenty of firms are desperate for more workers, especially tech workers. Those workers are in high demand from the auto industry to the Department of Veterans Affairs to not-for-profits,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

    “The labor market is still so tight that many tech workers, and workers with other skills, are snapped up well before they need to collect an unemployment check. And they are more likely to be snapped up by smaller firms, which have a much greater demand for workers than major corporations.

    The tech downturn is an anomaly amid a job market that remains the tightest in decades and has allowed many workers to command higher pay. Across the economy, announced layoffs last year fell to their second-lowest in 30 years of tracking by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, second only to 2021.

    But even as overall layoffs fell, tech layoffs rose, with a record 1 in 4 layoffs last year taking place in the tech sector.

    Here are the largest tech companies to announce cuts since 2022.

    Alphabet   

    The Google parent said on January 20 that it would let go of 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its 186,000-strong global workforce. The cuts apply “across Alphabet — product areas, functions, levels and regions,” CEO Sundar Pichai said.

    Pichai told employees that the Silicon Valley company simply hired too fast during the pandemic. 

    “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote in an email that was also posted on Alphabet’s corporate blog. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

    Amazon

    The e-commerce company is moving to cut about 18,000 positions, a downshift that began in November and that will continue into this year. That’s just a fraction of its 1.5 million-strong global workforce. 

    While the vast majority of the company’s employees work in its vast warehouse and logistics operation — which doubled in size during the pandemic — the cuts mostly affect white-collar employees in some of the company’s less profitable sectors, including the division responsible for its voice assistant, Alexa.

    Carvana

    The online car seller cut about 2,500 workers in May 2022, or 12% of its workforce. The company was widely criticized for its handling of the layoffs, many of which were done via Zoom and email. 

    The Phoenix-based company, which delivers new and used cars to buyers, blamed the cuts on an “automotive recession.”

    Coinbase

    The cryptocurrency trading platform cut roughly 20% of its workforce, or about 950 jobs, in January. It’s the second round of layoffs in less than a year, with 1,100 workers losing their jobs in June.

    IBM

    The company plans to cut about 3,900 workers, its chief financial officer told Bloomberg in January. The cuts amount to about 1.5% of the company’s global workforce, and come even as IBM posted better-than-expected revenue for the most recent quarter.

    The Armonk, New York-based firm will continue hiring in what its financial officer called “higher-growth areas.” IBM last year said it would invest tens of billions of dollars across New York’s Hudson Valley to spur semiconductor manufacturing.

    Lyft

    The ride-hailing service said in November it was cutting 13% of its workforce, almost 700 employees. The layoffs affect its corporate employees, since Lyft’s army of drivers are considered independent businesses, not employees of the transportation company. 

    Meta

    The parent company of Facebook in November laid off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce. Meta has struggled more than many tech companies this year; its user base has shrunk, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put billions of dollars into building what he calls the “metaverse,” to the consternation of its investors. The company’s stock has lost two-thirds of its value since peaking in August 2021.

    Microsoft

    The software company in January said it would cut about 10,000 jobs, almost 5% of its workforce, as it refocuses its strategy on artificial intelligence and away from hardware. In the two years ending in June 2022, Microsoft had expanded from 163,000 workers to 221,000.

    PayPal

    The digital payments company said in January it was cutting 2,000 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce, as it contends with what it called “the challenging macro-economic environment.”

    The San Jose, California-based company is the parent of PayPal is the parent of payment apps Venmo and Xoom and the coupon service Honey, among other brands. PayPal said the cuts would affect different brands unequally, although it did not specify further.

    Robinhood

    The company, whose app helped attract a new generation of investors to the market, announced in August that it would reduce its headcount by 23%, or approximately 780 people. That’s the second round of recent layoffs for the company, which last year cut 9% of its workforce.

    Salesforce

    The company cut 10% of its workforce, or about 7,300 employees, in January. It also said it was closing some offices, citing a “challenging” environment and lower customer spending. 

    Snap

    The parent company of social media platform Snapchat said in August that it was letting go of 20% of its staff. Snap’s staff has grown to more than 5,600 employees in recent years, meaning that, even after laying off more than 1,000 people, Snap’s staff would be larger than it was a year earlier.

    Spotify

    The music streaming service said in January it was cutting 6% of its workforce, or roughly 580 jobs, as part of a push to make the company more efficient. In 2022, Spotify’s operating costs grew twice as fast as its revenue, CEO Daniel Ek said, a pace he called “unsustainable.”

    “We still spend far too much time syncing on slightly different strategies, which slows us down,” CEO Daniel Elk said in a January 23 letter to employees posted on the company’s site. “And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance.”

    Stripe

    The payment processor announced layoffs of roughly 1,000 workers in November,  amounting to 14% of its workforce. In an email to employees posted on Stripe’s website, CEO Patrick Collison said the company expected “leaner times” amid worsening economic conditions.

    Twitter

    About half of the social media platform’s staff of 7,500 was let go after the billionaire CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, acquired the service in October. An unknown number have left, with some objecting to the new ownership and Musk’s demand for an “extremely hardcore” attitude.

    Wayfair

    The online shopping company announced in January that it would cut 1,750 workers, or about 10% of its global employees, as it adjusts to falling consumer demand after the home-renovation boom of the pandemic. It’s the second round of layoffs for the Boston-based company, which cut 870 employees in August.

    CEO Niraj Shah said the company “simply grew too big.”

    “In hindsight, similar to our technology peers, we scaled our spend too quickly over the last few years,” Shah said in a statement.

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  • Opinion: The rare bipartisan opportunity House Republicans should take advantage of | CNN

    Opinion: The rare bipartisan opportunity House Republicans should take advantage of | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    With only a thin and fractious majority in the House, the GOP is facing two years of struggling to set any kind of positive agenda. But one thing every elected Republican would agree on is the need to scrutinize the Biden administration.

    Courtesy Patrick T. Brown

    Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has already been hard at work, firing off letters demanding answers to pointed questions on border photo ops, President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, presidential visitor logs, remote work among top federal employees and Hunter Biden.

    This is, of course, business as usual. The party that doesn’t control the White House will always seek to score political points on possible bureaucratic scandals. In return, Democrats’ instinctive reaction might be to circle up the wagons and seek to stonewall or downplay as many of these efforts as possible.

    But one area of focus for the Oversight Committee deserves to be taken seriously, not just as a political point-scoring operation, but as an earnest attempt to improve how government works. A genuine bipartisan commitment can and should be made to evaluate the extent of fraud in the pandemic-era safety net measures. A better understanding of where the system failed would not only shine a light on how some funds were misspent but also lay the groundwork for better administration of safety-net benefits, in ways applicable and valuable even outside of the unique circumstances of a global pandemic.

    Recall that as the initial wave of coronavirus cases hit US shores, economists feared we could be headed for an economic meltdown. People stopped going about their daily lives, stay-at-home orders went into effect and businesses responded by laying off workers left and right. The unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April 2020, the highest level in the post-World War II era.

    Congress wanted to provide aid as quickly as possible; there simply wasn’t time to sit around and construct the ideal policies. As part of the frenetic response, the federal government used the often-clunky unemployment insurance systems run by states to try to backstop households’ finances.

    Fraud became an issue due to a number of factors, according to a June 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office, including unclear federal guidance, ill-equipped state offices and a relaxation of normal eligibility rules. It didn’t help that 32 states run their unemployment insurance systems on outdated infrastructure, often developed in the 1970s and 1980s, according to that same report. These systems make it difficult for states to have the flexibility and responsiveness necessary to run benefit programs efficiently – even when there isn’t a global pandemic.

    The underlying structure of unemployment insurance may have been an issue as well – the federal government provides support and technical assistance, while states determine eligibility and ensure accurate payments. The jerry-rigged systems in many states couldn’t handle the surge of applicants and a newly created unemployment insurance program relied on self-certification. Without any requirements to prove lost income, the program opened the door to bad actors.

    But some of the headlines about the amount of fraud in pandemic assistance are likely overblown. One widely-repeated claim about the ubiquity of fraud was advanced not by a disinterested party but by a company that sells ID verification systems. The GAO report estimates the amount of unemployment insurance fraud is likely over $60 billion (or about 7% of total $878 billion spent), although the true amount may not be knowable.

    $60 billion sounds like a lot of money, but some could argue the result justified the leaky process. Research by the Brookings Institution found that the expanded unemployment benefits delivered the most aid to lower-income workers, stabilizing the broader economy by keeping consumption stable. At the peak of Covid’s impact, millions of workers every week were applying for unemployment insurance; if excessive concern about fraud had prevented rolling out the federal expansion of benefits, it could have taken a lot longer for the economy to recover.

    But with the worst of the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, cracking down on people who abused the system and making it harder for future scammers to do the same is an appropriate area for the Oversight Committee to focus on. A full, bipartisan Congressional inquiry could spotlight the weaknesses of the current system and where it was taken advantage of in order to lay the groundwork for future efforts to improve the way benefits are disbursed.

    Not doing so would allow distrust around government programs to fester. Some voters who hear stories about fraudsters taking advantage of pandemic-era assistance – especially blatant examples of people who listed their name as “N/A” or claimed that they owned nonexistent farms – may lose faith in government’s ability to function properly. Knowing that the expanded assistance helped the economy does nothing to change or address the fact that some people took advantage of loopholes in the system.

    Some initial steps have been taken to address this lingering concern. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which was created as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in 2020, has provided publicly available data on how emergency pandemic funds were spent. Last summer, Congress passed bipartisan bills extending the statute of limitations to prosecute individuals who committed fraud through the Paycheck Protection Program or the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. And Democrats, such as Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who previously served as the chair of a subcommittee on the coronavirus response, have rightly pointed out that small business aid during the pandemic was also plagued by fraud and improper payments.

    Yet more could be done. A GAO report in October 2021 made six recommendations about how the Department of Labor could stem fraud in unemployment insurance programs, but a recent follow-up found the department had not implemented any of them. The deluge of cases has left investigators overwhelmed, and Congress could beef up funding for the agents that investigate pandemic fraud.

    Last year, the Biden administration announced initial steps to combat fraud and identity theft in pandemic relief, but it hasn’t made a priority of supporting bills like the one introduced in 2021 by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, which would have modernized the unemployment insurance program. Helping states develop better systems of determining eligibility and automating basic safeguards could make it easier to keep scammers out and make sure the truly deserving get the benefits they need.

    Republicans are right to put the spotlight on those who took advantage of pandemic-era programs. Democrats should join them. Getting benefits into the hands of people who merit them and keeping them out of the hands of people who don’t should be something both parties agree on. Amid all the other controversies that take up political oxygen, a concerted effort to crack down on wrongdoing and improve how our social safety net functions could be a welcome breath of bipartisan air.

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  • Millions of men in their prime working age are leaving the labor force, creating a hole in the market

    Millions of men in their prime working age are leaving the labor force, creating a hole in the market

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    Millions of men in their prime working age are leaving the labor force, creating a hole in the market – CBS News


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    Around seven million men in their prime working age neither have jobs nor are looking for one, creating a huge hole in the labor market and costing businesses in male-dominated fields like manufacturing millions of dollars. Tony Dokoupil talks to “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe and the CEO of a manufacturing company about the reasons behind this phenomenon.

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  • U.S. economy grew to end 2022, unemployment rate stays low

    U.S. economy grew to end 2022, unemployment rate stays low

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    U.S. economy grew to end 2022, unemployment rate stays low – CBS News


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    The economy is fighting back against inflationary pressures, but many economists say that won’t last, and the economy could slow down in 2023 as an intended consequence of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to rein in inflation by raising interest rates. Economist and Harvard University professor Jeffrey Frankel joined CBS News to discuss what the latest GDP data could mean for the economy moving forward.

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  • Millions of men have dropped out of the workforce, leaving companies struggling to fill jobs: It’s “a matter of our national identity”

    Millions of men have dropped out of the workforce, leaving companies struggling to fill jobs: It’s “a matter of our national identity”

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    A large number of American men of prime working age — between 25 and 54 years old — are not working or even looking for work, resulting in a major hole in the American economy.  

    In 1953, 98% of men in that age range had a job or were looking for one. That number has fallen ever since. Today, 7.2 million men have essentially dropped out of the workforce. 

    It’s “a matter of our national identity,” said Mike Rowe, the host of “Dirty Jobs” on Discovery. “I think it’s a giant issue. … And by the time we realize how big an issue it is, we’re going to have a hard time turning the temperature down.”

    It’s not an issue rooted in the unemployment rate, which at 3.5% is the lowest it’s been in 50 years. So, what’s behind the phenomenon?  

    More jobs than workers

    “We have more jobs than we have people for — about one and a half jobs for every one worker,” said Jay Timmons, who leads the National Association of Manufacturers, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that represents thousands of manufacturers across the country.  

    Timmons describes all this as a profound problem for the companies he represents. The No. 1 challenge for most of them right now is filling open jobs.

    “I never thought I’d be able to say that,” he told CBS News. “But now it’s kind of an all hands on deck. We’ve got to fill these jobs that are open.”

    More than 770,000 manufacturing jobs are open right now, according to the latest federal count, from November. The number has surged in recent years as companies reinvest in American-made products — or try to. 

    With manufacturing workers earning more than $30 an hour on average, Timmons said the problem is not the pay, but the perception.

    “It used to be dirty, dark, and dangerous,” he said. “Today it’s very sleek. It’s very technology-driven.”

    Not just perception

    Karla Trotman, CEO of Electro Soft, a company outside Philadelphia that makes circuit boards, said she wishes 45 people worked there instead of 30, but that she can’t find people to fill the roles — costing the company around $5 million in top-line revenue as she has been forced to down potential contracts.

    She suspects some people may be sitting out because of the recent change in how many of us look at work.

    “I think it’s fulfillment. I think it’s culture. I think people really want to feel as though they are appreciated,” she said.  

    “It’s an overall feeling of being fed up … and being taken for granted,” she added. 

    But there’s more to it, according to Laura Dawson Ullrich, a senior regional economist at the Charlotte branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Some non-working men have a “skills mismatch,” while others have criminal records that make them ineligible for many jobs and make some employers hesitant to hire them. 

    Many others rely on safety nets, such as disability payments.

    It might also come down to values. 

    Many public schools have stopped offering shop classes, which means many students may have stopped even considering some lines of work.

    “It goes back to the stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions that are keeping guidance counselors from talking about opportunities like this to the kids in their care,” said Rowe, who created the mikeroweWORKS Foundation in 2008 to promote careers in the vocational arts. “It’s those things that are keeping parents from putting all the options on the table.”

    Leisure time

    How are non-working men between 25 and 54 spending their time? On average, nearly seven hours each weekday are dedicated to leisure time — relaxing, playing games and watching TV, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2021.

    Data also shows that men who are not working or looking for work are spending less time caring for other household members, like children, than men who are at work.

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  • Here are the companies that have laid off employees this year — so far | CNN Business

    Here are the companies that have laid off employees this year — so far | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Just this week, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, Microsoft

    (MSFT)     and Vox Media announced layoffs that will affect more than 22,000 workers.

    Their moves follow on the heels of job cuts earlier this month at Amazon, Goldman Sachs and Salesforce. More companies are expected to do the same as firms that aggressively hired over the last two years slam on the brakes, and in many cases shift into reverse.

    The cutbacks are in sharp contrast to 2022, which had the second-highest level of job gains on record, with 4.5 million. But last year’s job numbers began falling as the year went on, with December’s job report showing the lowest monthly gains in two years.

    The highest level of hiring occurred in 2021, when 6.7 million jobs were added. But that came on the heels of the first year of the pandemic, when the US effectively shut down and 9.3 million jobs were lost.

    The current layoffs are across multiple industries, from media firms to Wall Street, but so far are hitting Big Tech especially hard.

    That’s a contrast from job losses during the pandemic, which saw consumers’ buying habits shifting toward e-commerce and other online services during lockdown. Tech firms went on a hiring spree.

    But now, workers are returning to their offices and in-person shopping is bouncing back. Add in the increasing likelihood of a recession, higher interest rates and tepid demand due to rising prices, and tech businesses are slashing their costs.

    January has been filled with headlines announcing job cuts at company after company. Here is a list of layoffs this month – so far.

    Google

    (GOOGL)    ’s parent said Friday it is laying off 12,000 workers across product areas and regions, or 6% of its workforce. Alphabet added 50,000 workers over the past two years as the pandemic created greater demand for its services. But recent recession fears has advertisers pulling back from its core digital ad business.

    “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

    The tech behemoth is laying off 10,000 employees, the company said in a securities filing on Wednesday. Globally, Microsoft has 221,000 full-time employees with 122,000 of them based in the US.

    CEO Satya Nadella said during a talk at Davos that “no one can defy gravity” and that Microsoft could not ignore the weaker global economy.

    “We’re living through times of significant change, and as I meet with customers and partners, a few things are clear,” Nadella wrote in a memo. “First, as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less.”

    The publisher of the news and opinion website Vox, tech website The Verge and New York Magazine, announced Friday that it’s cutting 7% of its staff, or about 130 people.

    “We are experiencing and expect more of the same economic and financial pressures that others in the media and tech industries have encountered,” chief executive Jim Bankoff said in a memo.

    Layoffs are also hitting Wall Street hard. The world’s largest asset manager is eliminating 500 jobs, or less than 3% of its workforce.

    Today’s “unprecedented market environment” is a stark contrast from its attitude over the last three years,, when it increased its staff by about 22%. Its last major round of cutbacks was in 2019.

    The bank will lay off up to 3,200 workers this month amid a slump in global dealmaking activity. More than a third of the cuts are expected to be from the firm’s trading and banking units. Goldman Sachs

    (FADXX)     had almost 50,000 employees at the end of last year’s third quarter.

    The crypto brokerage announced in early January that it’s cutting 950 people – almost one in five employees in its workforce. The move comes just a few months after Coinbase laid off 1,100 people.

    Though Bitcoin had a solid start to the new year, crypto companies were slammed by significant drops in prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

    McDonald’s

    (MCD)    , which thrived during the pandemic, is planning on cutting some of its corporate staff, CEO Chris Kempczinski said this month.

    “We will evaluate roles and staffing levels in parts of the organization and there will be difficult discussions and decisions ahead,” Kempszinski said, outlining a plan to “break down internal barriers, grow more innovative and reduce work that doesn’t align with the company’s priorities.”

    The online personalized subscription clothing retailer said it plans to lay off 20% of its salaried staff.

    “We will be losing many talented team members from across the company and I am truly sorry,” Stitch Fix

    (SFIX)     founder and former CEO Katrina Lake wrote in a blog post.

    As the new year began, Amazon

    (AMZN)     said it plans to lay off more than 18,000 employees. Departments from human resources to the company’s Amazon

    (AMZN)     Stores will be affected.

    “Companies that last a long time go through different phases. They’re not in heavy people expansion mode every year,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to employees.

    Amazon boomed during the pandemic, and hired rapidly over the last few years. But demand has cooled as consumers return to their offline lives and battle high prices. Amazon says it has more than 800,000 employees.

    At The New York Times DealBook summit In November, Jassy said he believes Amazon “made the right decision” regarding its rapid infrastructure build out but said its hiring spree is a “lesson for everyone.”

    Even as he spoke, Amazon warehouse workers who helped organize the company’s first-ever US labor union at a Staten Island facility last year were picketing Jassy’s appearance outside the conference venue.

    “We definitely want to take this opportunity to let him know that the workers are waiting and we are ready to negotiate our first contract,” Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls said, calling the protest a “welcoming party” for Jassy.

    Salesforce

    (CRM)     will cut about 10% of its workforce from its more than 70,000 employess and reduce its real estate footprint. In a letter to employees, Salesforce

    (CRM)    ’s chair and co-CEO Marc Benioff admitted to adding too much to the company’s headcount early in the pandemic.

    – CNN’s Clare Duffy, Matt Egan, Oliver Darcy, Julia Horowitz, Catherine Thorbecke, Paul R. La Monica, Nathaniel Meyersohn, Parija Kavilanz, Danielle Wiener-Bronner and Hanna Ziady contributed to this report.

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  • Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A law firm representing dozens of former UK Twitter employees is accusing the company of “unlawful, unfair and completely unacceptable treatment” of workers following recent mass layoffs, which the firm referred to as a “sham redundancy process.”

    In a letter sent to the company on Monday, law firm Winckworth Sherwood alleged that Twitter violated UK law by cutting off terminated employees’ access to internal systems without engaging in the required warning and consultation period. The letter also said Twitter has failed to provide information about the selection criteria used to determine the layoffs.

    The letter states that 43 affected UK employees are prepared to take the issue to an Employment Tribunal, a UK system for employees to bring legal disputes against their employers, if the company does not agree to cooperate with negotiations over the layoff process.

    The warning marks the latest challenge to Twitter from former employees affected by mass layoffs that took place after Elon Musk acquired the company in October. Twitter laid off half of its global staff in early November, and has continued to fire and push out additional employees in the months since, including through an ultimatum to work “hardcore.”

    More than 300 former US employees have filed demands for arbitration against the company, according to attorneys representing them. Twitter is also facing four proposed class action lawsuits in the United States related to the layoffs. Now, the backlash to the layoffs may be escalating in the UK.

    “Our clients have been aghast at the direction taken by their employer, whose mission they have genuinely believed in and, in a number of cases, whose growth and transformation they have supported for many years,” lawyers for Winckworth Sherwood wrote in the letter. “They remain resolved to protect their positions, professional reputations and legal claims against the Company should it now proceed to dismiss them unlawfully and unfairly.”

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations team as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

    UK trade union Prospect, which represents more than 100 UK Twitter employees, also wrote to the company this week raising concerns about its layoff process, including claims that Twitter is “choosing not to honor” its promise that employees laid off following Musk’s acquisition would receive severance with terms no less favorable than prior to his takeover.

    Prospect also said the company has given workers “an arbitrary date to sign their rights away” in order to receive better separation terms, although negotiations over the layoffs are ongoing. (Typically, negotiations over mass layoffs by UK companies involve discussions of the reasons for terminations and how to minimize their size and impact.)

    “It is to be celebrated that in the UK it is not possible to simply fire employees en masse at will as Twitter has done in other countries,” Prospect, said in the letter. “Rest assured, Prospect will continue to lobby the Government and raise public awareness about employers who treat their workers like commodities to be discarded on a whim.”

    In the United States, there have also been concerns among Twitter employees after they began receiving their severance packages last weekend. The offers promise one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, raising concerns about the terms and saying it falls short of what the company has previously promised to provide to affected employees.

    The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

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  • Silicon Valley layoffs go from bad to worse | CNN Business

    Silicon Valley layoffs go from bad to worse | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Shortly before Thanksgiving, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirmed rumors that layoffs had begun in multiple departments at the e-commerce giant and said it would review staffing needs into the new year.

    On Wednesday, Jassy provided a sobering update on that review: Amazon is cutting more than 18,000 jobs, nearly double the 10,000 that had previously been reported and marking the highest absolute number of layoffs of any tech company in the recent downturn.

    At Amazon and other tech companies, the second half of last year was marked by hiring freezes, layoffs and other cost-cutting measures at a number of household names in Silicon Valley. But if 2022 was the year the good times ended for these tech companies, 2023 is already shaping up to be a year when people at those companies brace for how much worse things can get.

    On the same day Amazon announced layoffs, cloud-computing company Salesforce said it was axing about 10% of its staff – a figure that easily amounts to thousands of workers – and video-sharing outlet Vimeo said it was cutting 11% of its workforce. The following day, digital fashion platform Stitch Fix said it planned to cut 20% of its salaried staff, after having cut 15% of its salaried staff last year.

    The continued fallout in the industry comes as tech firms grapple with a seemingly perfect storm of factors. After initially seeing a boom in demand for digital services amid the onset of the pandemic, many companies aggressively hired. Then came a whiplash in demand as Covid-19 restrictions receded and people returned to their offline lives. Rising interest rates also dried up the easy money tech companies relied on to fuel big bets on future innovations, and cut into their sky-high valuations.

    Heading into 2023, recession fears and economic uncertainties are still weighing heavily on consumers and policymakers’ minds, and interest rate hikes are expected to continue. Beyond that, the growing number of layoffs may also give certain tech companies some cover to take more severe steps to trim costs now than they may have otherwise done.

    While there have been some layoffs recently in the consumer goods sector and hints of more to come elsewhere, the situation in Silicon Valley remains in stark contrast to the economy as a whole.

    The Labor Department’s latest employment report on Friday pointed to a year of extraordinary job growth in 2022, marking the second-best year for the labor market in records that go back to 1939. Meanwhile, a separate report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found tech layoffs were up 649% in 2022 compared to the previous year, versus just a 13% uptick in job cuts in the overall economy during the same period.

    In his note to employees this month, Jassy chalked up the need for significant cost cutting at Amazon to “the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years.” Others across the industry have echoed those points, with varying degrees of atonement.

    In a series of apologies that are beginning to sound the same, Silicon Valley business leaders from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to Salesforce’ Marc Benioff have blamed the wave of job cuts on their own misreading of how pandemic-fueled demand for tech products would play out.

    Benioff began a memo to the employees of Salesforce last week by invoking, as he so often does, the Hawaiian word for family. “As one ‘Ohana,” he wrote, “we have never been more mission-critical to our customers.” But the economic environment was “challenging,” Benioff wrote. “With this in mind, we’ve made the very difficult decision to reduce our workforce by about 10 percent, mostly over the coming weeks.”

    “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” Benioff went on to say. Like other tech leaders, however, it’s unclear if Benioff will face any repercussions to his title or compensation.

    Patricia Campos-Medina, the executive director of the Worker Institute at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, slammed this spate of mea culpas as “empty apologies” to the workers now paying for their miscalculations.

    While there will be a lot of near-term uncertainty for these tech workers, as well “a big economic hit on their lives,” Campos-Medina added, “I do think that this is a very skilled workforce that will find a way to engage back in the economy.” She predicts many of the laid-off tech workers will likely be able to find jobs and “we will see more stability in the mid-to-long term.”

    But the end may still not be in sight. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities said last week that the Salesforce and Amazon layoffs “add to the trend we expect to continue in 2023 as the tech sector adjusts to a softer demand environment.” The industry is now being forced to cut costs after “spending money like 1980’s Rock Stars to keep up with demand,” he added.

    And despite the robust overall labor market, there are growing concerns that tech layoffs could spread elsewhere.

    “I think we’re seeing an inflection point; the rate of jobs growth is slowing and a lot of these tech layoffs that we’re hearing about, I think are going to start materializing across the broader economy by the end of the first quarter,” John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult told CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans in an interview Friday.

    In that sense, at least, Silicon Valley may once again be ahead of the curve, but not in the way it wants.

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  • Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

    Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    After months of uncertainty and feeling left in the dark, many former Twitter employees impacted by a mass layoff in early November began receiving their severance offers over the weekend. But some are frustrated by the offer and the conditions attached to it.

    The severance offer promises one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, saying it falls short of the “3 months of severance” that new owner Elon Musk had previously promised would be provided. (That time period appeared to include pay for the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide under various state laws.) The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

    The former Twitter employees are now stuck deciding whether to accept the money or join the hundreds of others who have already filed arbitration demands or lawsuits against the company.

    “We’ve been hearing from hundreds of Twitter employees who are considering their options and not happy about only being offered one month severance, after they were promised much more,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, another lawyer working on behalf of former Twitter employees, told CNN in a statement Monday. “We have filed hundreds of arbitration claims already and will continue to file them.”

    The severance fight comes as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    Twitter’s trust and safety team experienced at least a dozen additional cuts on Friday, according to a report from Bloomberg over the weekend.

    Bloom, who said she has also filed dozens of demands for arbitration on behalf of former Twitter employees, said the severance offer does not include pro-rated bonuses or accelerated stock vesting for eligible employees, which could amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost funds for some affected workers. The company typically provided such benefits to laid-off employees prior to Musk’s acquisition, she said.

    The severance offer would also require that employees who sign agree not to cooperate as a witness in any legal actions brought by third parties against Twitter. But they would also have to agree to cooperate on behalf of Twitter in its defense to “provide truthful information” as a witness in any legal action against the company, according to the attorneys.

    One Twitter employee laid off during the early November mass layoffs tweeted over the weekend urging fellow affected employees not to “click or accept ANYTHING in that package” without first speaking to an attorney. “For me personally, the money is one component,” they said. “It’s about principle. I strongly believe that we should be keeping people accountable for the promises that they make and failing to deliver on them.”

    To add insult to injury, at least one former employee claimed on Twitter that the severance offer went to their email’s spam folder.

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  • Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

    Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formal severance offer or separation agreement.

    One former Twitter employee told CNN that they had expected to receive some information from the company by Wednesday, the last official employment date for many workers affected by the first wave of layoffs under Musk based on state and federal notice period regulations.

    As of early Thursday, however, the former employee said they had yet to receive any documents related to a severance agreement or offer. Other laid-off employees tweeted similar remarks this week, including one who said they had “never even seen a severance letter let alone been offered severance.”

    A spokesperson for Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing hundreds of former Twitter employees, confirmed that her clients who were hit by the Twitter layoffs in early November also had yet to receive any severance information as of Thursday. “There was some anticipation that they would be sent yesterday, but we haven’t seen that,” Kevin Ready, the spokesperson, said of the severance agreements.

    “Yesterday was the official separation date for thousands of Twitter employees, and after months of chaos and uncertainty created by Elon Musk, these workers remain in the lurch,” Liss-Riordan said in a Thursday statement.

    The employee concerns come as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    The company was recently sued by a commercial landlord and a private flight company alleging Twitter has failed to pay bills. And The New York Times last month reported that Twitter was considering denying laid off employees their severance as a cost-cutting measure, citing people familiar with the talks among company leadership, adding to the sense of uncertainty for affected workers.

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations department as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the claims it has not offered or paid any severance. At the time of the layoffs, Musk promised that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance,” a time period that appears to include the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide.

    A report by Fortune on Thursday afternoon, citing an unnamed source familiar with the situation and screenshots viewed by the publication, said that Twitter planned to send severance agreements to affected employees on Thursday, although it was unclear exactly when they would go out. The severance agreements were set to provide laid off US employees with one month’s base pay and would include a provision requiring employees to waive participation in pending lawsuits against the company, according to the report.

    Liss-Riordan has filed four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter on behalf of employees affected by layoffs, with claims including that Twitter backtracked on promises to allow remote work and consistent severance benefits, as well as complaints related to alleged disability and gender-based discrimination. She has also filed three claims against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of former employees. Liss-Riordan said Thursday that she has also filed another 100 demands for arbitration against Twitter on behalf of former employees, after filing an initial 100 last month.

    Last month, the employees represented by Liss-Riordan scored an early win in court when a judge ordered Twitter to inform laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before asking them to sign any separation agreements that include a release of legal claims.

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  • LinkedIn is having a moment thanks to a wave of layoffs | CNN Business

    LinkedIn is having a moment thanks to a wave of layoffs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In a normal year at this time, a typical LinkedIn feed might be full of posts about year-end reflections on leadership and professional goals and suggested lifehacks for the year ahead — possibly with a few posts from CMOs offering tips on brand strategy, for good measure.

    Those posts are still there. But mixed in are many others about job hunts, offers of support for laid off friends and colleagues, and advice for coping with career hurdles in an uncertain economic environment.

    Some LinkedIn users affected by recent layoffs have formed groups on the site aimed at providing assistance, coordinating around signing exit paperwork and aiding with connections for new jobs. One LinkedIn group of employees affected by the November layoffs at Facebook-parent Meta, for example, now has more than 200 members. Even bosses who are doing the laying off have turned to LinkedIn to explain themselves and seek support or advice, as one marketing CEO did in a post alongside a tearful selfie last year (to mixed results).

    If the first year of the pandemic was marked by widespread layoffs in lower paying retail and services jobs, the past few months have been defined by something different: the prospect of a white-collar recession. Even as the overall job market remains strong, there has been a wave of recent layoffs in the tech and media industries — which just so happen to make up a core part of LinkedIn’s user base. Suddenly, the normally staid professional network has become both a vital lifeline for recently laid off workers and a surprisingly lively social platform.

    The LinkedIn mobile app was downloaded an estimated 58.4 million times worldwide in 2022 across the Google Play and Apple app stores, up 10% from the prior year, according to research firm Sensor Tower.

    The number of posts on LinkedIn mentioning “open to work” were up 22% during November compared to the same period in the prior year, according to data provided by the company. LinkedIn says it also saw a steady increase in the rate of users adding connections last year compared to the year prior, a sign that users were more active on the platform.

    The uptick in use appears to have been good for LinkedIn’s business. The platform posted 17% year-over-year revenue growth in the three months ended in September, according to parent company Microsoft’s most recent earnings report. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts in the October earnings call that LinkedIn was seeing “record engagement” among its 875 million members, with growth accelerating especially in international markets.

    Some of LinkedIn’s momentum may predate the wave of layoffs. “There’s been an uptick in [LinkedIn use] since the pandemic,” said Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor and social media expert at Syracuse University. “You had to do social distancing and we were quarantining and people were working remotely so there was a shift in real-life networking possibilities.”

    LinkedIn rose to the occasion — and now it may be rising to another one.

    Even apart from the layoffs, the social media landscape has been through a volatile year. Facebook and Instagram have been criticized by users for racing to turn their services into TikTok. TikTok has been criticized over concerns that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. And after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter late last year, the platform has been criticized for morphing into a possible haven for its most incendiary users.

    But LinkedIn remains, as ever, LinkedIn — and at this moment, with fears of a looming recession and career concerns top of mind, LinkedIn may be just what the digital world needs.

    Grygiel said many people working in media or academia are likely now looking for somewhere to build and engage in professional communities other than Twitter. And while upstart Twitter alternatives like Mastodon have experienced a surge in growth, they still don’t have the same sort of network effect that comes with a legacy platform’s broad user base.

    LinkedIn in recent years has leaned into courting influencers who regularly post content to the site, potentially giving users more reasons to visit. And the platform has been growing its “learning” section, which provides video courses taught by various industry experts and which the company says experienced a 17% increase in hours spent as of November compared to the year prior. But lately it appears users have more than enough reason to use LinkedIn amid a wave of thousands of layoffs.

    Perhaps the clearest and most public examples of LinkedIn’s new centrality came from rival social networks like Twitter.

    In the wake of Twitter’s November mass layoffs — in which half the company was terminated, followed by additional firings and exits — many former and remaining employees took to LinkedIn, rather than the platform they had built, to seek support, community and new opportunities.

    One group of Twitter employees created a spreadsheet of laid-off workers from the company alongside recruiters hiring for other firms, and used LinkedIn to help facilitate sign-ups. Another pair of former Twitter employees set up a system to connect job hunters with recruitment professionals open to volunteering to provide free resume review and interview prep services, which they promoted through LinkedIn.

    “We completely understand how the job-hunting process can be scary and overwhelming … While we can’t guarantee where your next opportunity will be or when it will come, we can offer guidance, so you will be ready for that opportunity when it arrives,” Darnell Gilet, a former Twitter senior technical recruiter who helped coordinate the effort, said in a LinkedIn post.

    Gilet, who was affected by the mass layoffs at Twitter in November following Elon Musk’s takeover, told CNN last month that around 28 different recruiters and talent acquisition professionals had agreed to participate in the system, and that he himself had spoken to nearly two dozen job seekers since shortly after he was laid off to offer advice and support. He said LinkedIn seemed like the obvious place to promote the service.

    “Chaos creates opportunity for somebody, right?” Gilet said. “People are getting laid off and you have this recession that’s looming, the ideal place … that would have the greatest growth opportunity from that would be a platform that’s focused on careers like LinkedIn. So it makes perfect sense.”

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  • U.S. added 223,000 jobs in December, capping off strong 2022

    U.S. added 223,000 jobs in December, capping off strong 2022

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    The red-hot job market capped off 2022 on a high note, with employers adding 223,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported Friday.

    The payroll numbers reflect a slowdown from the pace of job creation earlier in the year, but they are slightly above economists’ predictions that businesses had added about 200,000 jobs last month.

    The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% as more workers found jobs, matching a 50-decade low. The Federal Reserve is seeking to tamp inflation by putting the brakes on the economy — including hiring — through its series of recent interest rate hikes. While employers added more jobs than expected in December, investors were cheered by last month’s cooler wage growth.

    “It’s hard to imagine a jobs report in better balance,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, in an email. “Wage growth is slowing, which will take some pressure off inflation, and could slow Fed rate increases.”

    More health care jobs, fewer temp jobs

    Job gains in the sectors of leisure and hospitality, health care, construction and durable goods manufacturing offset losses in temporary health services, non-durable goods manufacturing and information — the sector that contains technology and media companies.

    Technology companies have been laying off workers for months, with some, including Amazon and Meta, saying they had hired too many people during the pandemic. This week, Amazon said it would increase its layoffs by an additional 18,000 people, and cloud software provider Salesforce said it would cut nearly 8,000 workers. Stitch Fix, the fast fashion provider, said Thursday that it’s cutting 20% of its salaried workers. DoorDash has said it will eliminate 1,250 jobs.

    “Although there are an increasing number of high-profile layoffs, particularly in the technology sector and also in the mortgage industry, hiring in other sectors of the economy are more than offsetting these on net,” Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a note.

    Average hourly pay, which had been increasing at an annual rate of 5% in September, fell to 4.6% last month. While frustrating for workers whose pay is lagging cost-of-living increases, the number is sure to be an encouraging sign for the Fed in its quest to lower inflation.

    The Fed has hiked interest rates seven times in the past year, with Chair Jerome Powell emphasizing in recent remarks that strong job growth, and the pay increases employers must offer to find and keep workers, can perpetuate inflation. That’s because companies often raise prices to pass on their higher labor costs to their customers.

    Friday’s lower-than-expected report gave investors hope that the Fed can ease off on its interest-rate increases, and sent stocks upward. The S&P 500 gained 0.4% at 10 a.m. Eastern time, while the Dow rose 0.6%.

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