Yahoo has some interesting articles this morning
Bad January retail
The sales figures made it clear that consumers wrestling with high gas and food prices, a slumping housing market, an escalating credit crisis and a weakening job market retrenched further, buying mostly necessities even when redeeming their holiday gift cards. The disappointments cut across all sectors .
Wow! Written by a blogger? ;)
Jobless claims show labor market straining
The Labor Department reported Thursday that 356,000 claims for jobless benefits were filed last week, a decline of 22,000 from the previous week. The decline only erased a part of the huge jump of 72,000 in claims of the previous week.
Ouch. Not good numbers.
Do you remember I was blogging that my company would probably announce a relocation in March? Stop holding your breath. They won't announce anything.
Why?
1. We've already quitely relocated about a thousand to Texas in the last few months and into the next month or two. A relatively slow tricle. Why slow? Notice the lack of new coverage?
2. The company quietly opened a new campus in Colorado (surprised me!) and the first I heard about it is when employees of mine told me they were cashing out and moving to Colorado. Since this is a pure voluntary move, there won't have to issue any press releases. Again, a very quiet bleed off of jobs.
Mostly we're pulling from LA and DC. A few other areas, but not by intention. Since these are applied for relocations, the company cannot geographically limit the applicant pool without raising alarm bells.
Quite bluntly, we're copying Raytheon; they have become the master of quiet relocations from state to state. No forced relocations... No layoffs. But a steady bleed out of bubble markets. I didn't think we'd go the silent route. J6P thinks the Aerospace downturn was the only reason for the 1990's recession; the aerospace companies do not want to be the poster child for a housing downturn anywhere.
My company needs to get a cadre of experience into the new campuses to mentor new engineers we're hiring. Our rate of hiring will explode just due to the baby boomers retiring. So the company copied a competitor to enable future hiring without raising alarm bells. I'm surprised now, but I shouldn't have been. Cest la vie.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
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2 comments:
I am not surprised. Everyone wants out of FL and CA. I am out of FL in a few months for NW PA where houses are 4-5x cheaper!
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