Payroll processing company ADP said private sector payrolls grew by 201,000 in March, after a revised 217,000 increase in February. Economists were expecting a gain of 210,000 private sector jobs, according to consensus estimates from Briefing.com. Get the full story »
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Planned layoffs decline in March
Employers announced fewer planned job cuts in March, even as government sector layoffs mounted, according to a report released Wednesday. The number of jobs cut fell 18 percent to 41,528 from February’s 50,702, according to outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Year over year, job cuts dropped 39 percent from 67,611 in March 2010. Get the full story »
Tellabs to lay off 60 workers
Tellabs Inc. plans to lay off 60 employees by April 1 as part of a broader restructuring aimed at refocusing the Naperville-based company on data-based telecommunications equipment. Get the full story »
More summer jobs, and they’ll pay better
After suffering through several years of dismal summer job markets, not only will there be more hourly positions this year, but they will pay better.
More than half of hiring managers, or 55 percent, said they plan to hire seasonal workers this summer, according to the survey released Thursday from hourly job site SnagAJob.com. That’s the highest percentage since SnagAJob started the survey four years ago. Get the full story »
Acco Brands to cut 2% of jobs
Office products maker Acco Brands said it would eliminate about 2 percent of its jobs and incur about $6 million in pre-tax costs in 2011 as it enforces a cost savings plan in its European business. Get the full story »
More states looking to cut jobless benefits
A growing number of states are looking to cut back on jobless benefits to minimize the increase in unemployment taxes businesses pay. State officials are concerned that these tax hikes could deter companies from hiring.
Some states, such as Florida and Arkansas, are debating reducing the number of weeks that the jobless can collect state unemployment. Others, including Indiana, want to limit the number of people eligible for benefits. Get the full story »
Fed report: Joblessness cyclical not structural
The current high rate of unemployment in the United States is primarily due to cyclical factors, not structural changes in the economy, according to researchers at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.
The study runs counter to worries among some top Fed policymakers that undesirable upward pressure on wages, and thus inflation, could kick in even when unemployment remains relatively high — a situation that could have implications for U.S. monetary policy. Get the full story »
Job fair for veterans coming to Chicago next week
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching an initiative called “Hiring our Heroes” next Thursday with a job fair in Chicago — the first of 100 job fairs for veterans across the country. Get the full story »
Unemployment rises in nearly all metro areas
Unemployment rose in nearly all of the 372 largest U.S. cities in January compared to the previous month, mostly because of seasonal changes such as the layoff of temporary retail employees hired for the holidays.
In the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, the unemployment rate of 9.7 percent in January represented a 0.8 percentage point increase from the month before. Unemployment was down 2.2 percentage points from a year ago. Get the full story »
Goldman cuts 5% of trading desk
Goldman Sachs Group laid off 5 percent of its trading desk staff on Tuesday as part of its annual review process, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Get the full story »
More job cuts in Sun-Times newsroom
The Chicago Sun Times building at 350 N.Orleans Street. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
A day after the death of Sun-Times Media Chairman James Tyree, who led the effort to save the local media company from liquidation 17 months ago, the company’s flagship Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday laid off several newsroom employees.
“That was something that had been planned for a while. It certainly had nothing to do with yesterday’s news,” said Jeremy Halbreich, Sun-Times Media’s chief executive .
Sources said they believed the reduction affected four staff members, but Halbreich did not confirm an exact figure. The cuts, he said, were part of an ongoing effort to centralize certain operations among the company’s many area publications.
First-time jobless claims fall
Job seekers in Anaheim, Calif., in June 2010. (Roben Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, a sign that the job market continues to slowly improve. There were 385,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended March 12, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was down 16,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised 401,000. Get the full story »
Chicago trails just Sun Belt in lost building jobs
The Chicago area followed close behind battered Sun Belt metro areas in numbers of lost construction jobs in the downturn, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Associated General Contractors of America.
Chicago-Joliet-Naperville region lost 33 percent of its construction jobs, or 52,100 positions, between January of 2007 and this January, the sixth-greatest loss among metro areas, according to the group’s analysis of government data. Get the full story »
AOL to shed 900 jobs, beef up content
AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said Thursday that the company is cutting 200 jobs in the U.S. and 700 in India after its $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post.
Armstrong, speaking at the Bloomberg Media Summit in New York City, lamented the cuts but said AOL is “much more healthy” than it was a few years ago. Get the full story »
U.S. jobless claims up 26,000 last week
New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, a government report showed on Thursday, but held below a key level associated with labor market recovery. Get the full story »
