Timesizing® Associates - HOMEPAGE

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Downsizings, November, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080

11/29/2003   1 downsizing, totaling 1470 lost jobs, cited in WSJ & NYT -

1. Stolt-Nielsen unit sees deeper financial loss, by Robert Tomsho, WSJ, B4.
   Stolt Offshore SA, hit by continuing losses on major projects...expects...to report a deeper financial loss for fiscal 2003 and [to] lay off 21% of its 7,000 employees.
   [= 1,470 layoffs.]
   Although its stock trades separately, Stolt Offshore...based in Aberdeen, Scotland..\..is the offshore construction unit of Stolt-Nielsen SA, the chemical-shipping company that has been rocked by U.S. and European investigations into alleged bid-rigging in the chemicals transportation market....

• French unions ask diplomats to strike against fund cuts, by Elaine Sciolino, NYT, A5.
  PARIS...- Belt-tightening at the Quai d'Orsay [= the French Foreign Ministry] has meant the elimination of jobs....

1. Canadian National Railway Co. [CNR], WSJ, B8.
   ...agreed to pay the British Columbia [BC] government C$1B [US$758m] for the province's BC Rail franchise and the right to operate over the line under a long-term lease.... CNR...plans to cut BC Rail's workforce to 950 employees from 1380 currently. ...250...early retirement [and] 180...attrition of severance....
   [1380-950= 430 jobs cut - a betrayal by the BC gov't?]

2. Publisher to close 3 magazines aimed at black readers, by David Carr, NYT, C6.
   Vanguarde Media Inc., publisher of
   1. Savoy,
   2. Honey
   3. and Heart and Soul,
   announced yesterday that it would close the magazines and seek bankruptcy protection....
   [Unspecified jobs lost. And yet a magazine explicitly aimed at white readers would be roasted.]

1. Sprint to lay off 2,000 employees, pointer digest (to C8), NYT, C1 (//WSJ, C12).
   ...in all divisions..\..2.9% of its employees, as it reorgs operations to contend with falling long-distance sales....

2. Advertising -...Miscellany, NYT, C8.
   FCB HealthCare will close its San Francisco office and move about half of the dozen employees there to its NY HQ....
   [Half a dozen = 6 jobcuts. We should really count all 12 cuz of the distance of the move.]

1. Germans stave off [?] industrial flight to Third World, NYT, C2 (cont'd fm C1).
   ...This week...Epcos, a Munich-based maker of electronic components, said it would shift 500 jobs to China, Singapore and Portugal....

2. GST Autoleather, NYT, C4.
   ...Hagerstown, Md., a leading supplier of seating leather...plans to move its cutting operations to Mexico, eliminating as many as 315 jobs at plants in Williamsport, Md., and Reading, Pa., in early 2004.

3. Temple-Inland, NYT, C4.
   ...Austin, Tx., a...lumber maker, [will] eliminate 300 jobs at its box-making business by the end of the year to reduce costs....

4. Japan: Cotton yarn futures trading to end, NYT, W1.
   The Osaka Mercantile Exchange will close Japan's last cotton yarn futures market because of waning interest. Trading [which] started 110 years ago..\..will be suspended on Dec.1 and...formally end in April 2004....
   [Unspecified job losses.]

1. Functions at five companies to be centralized to cut costs, WSJ, C12.
   Healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson plans to cut costs and a "modest" number of jobs by centralizing some functions of its 5 pharma companies to free up money for new product development....
   [See also 11/07 #1 below.]

1. AT&T Wireless is making plans, pointer summary (to A3), WSJ, front page.
   ...to lay off over 10% of its 30,000 workers in the next year and may outsource their jobs to India and elsewhere overseas.
   [10% of 30000= 3,000 layoffs.]

2. WestPoint Stevens plant closing to trim 300 jobs, NYT, C4.

• Getting a job in the [Silicon] Valley is easy, if you're perfect - Technology itself may be reducing the need for high-tech workers [no kidding!], NYT, C1.
  ..."Not only are there fewer jobs, but the ones that are out there don't pay as much as they used to," \said\ Cary Snider [who] after 16 months without a job...is joining a 4-person startup as a technical analyst, having given up his search for just the right position....
  Silicon Valley [is] the humbled epicenter of the nation's IT industry.... But...the continued displacement of basic-level technology jobs overseas, and the boomerang effect as companies use the new technologies largely invented here to sharply increase productivity, is keeping employment demand and salaries markedly below their boom-time levels.
  Indeed, what qualifies as good news in the technology industry is not so much evidence of overall job gains, but signs that job losses have slowed considerably. ...The IT sector [had] 540,000 job losses [last] year.... Mike Curran, director of Nova, a job retraining program in San Jose, said..."companies are being very selective...requiring four or five interviews, and they're looking for exact characteristics." Owen Rubin...an engineer who was laid off from his $165,000 management position more than a year ago...said..."They give you a list of the 30 things that they want...and if you're not an identical match, they move on immediately"..\..
  [That's exactly what we said 3-4 years ago when it was taking longer to get rehired. Employers have been spoiled rotten over the last 30 years of mounting labor glut.]
  Mr. Rubin [found an] opportunity to lead the engineering team \at\ a software startup [but] the company could not afford to pay him in cash and offered to compensate him in shares alone....

• Bottom-dwelling, letter to editor by David Butscher of New Orleans, WSJ, A21.
  Thank you for printing Bobby Jindal's essay ("Gumbo, zydeco - and jobs," editorial page, 11/14). That we let slip away the opportunity to elect a young, energetic Rhodes Scholar to the governor's office, independent of party affiliation, speaks volumes about this state and why we're forever at the bottom of every imaginable category. As the popular bumper sticker reads, "Louisiana, Third World and Proud of It."

1. Nearly twice as many workers as expected accept buyouts, WSJ, A16 (//NYT, C4).
   About 21,600 Verizon Communications Inc. employees accepted a buyout offer and will leave the payroll by the end of the week, nearly double the number [12,000] that the NY telephone company estimated last month [and almost 10% of its workforce - NYT]. The[y] include 5,600 union workers and about 16,000 nonunion managers and administrative staff.... The buyout...was designed to help accelerate cost cutting in the company's shrinking residential telephone business....

2. Toys 'R' Us to close 180 stores, by Joseph Pereira, WSJ, B4 (//NYT, C4).
   [Thank God - hugeness and toys are mutually incompatible anyway.]
   ...About 3,800 jobs will be eliminated....

• Hiring-and-firing trend gains as job market continues murky, by Kris Maher, WSJ, B12.
  Dave Campeas, a recruiter in Princeton NJ, is ready to start a search to fill 200 new openings at a client company that makes medical devices. But first, the company has to lay off roughly the same number from another division. "They don't want to seem to have people coming in one door and out the other," says Mr. Campeas, president and CEO of Princeton Search Group, which is part of Management Recruiters International's affiliate network.
  [Interesting how mgmt recruiters go along with this costly strategy. It's not hard to imagine why. For the same reason that stock brokers encourage churning, and lawyers encourage dissension.]
  Part of the client company's motivation for hiring new employees, rather than attempting to retrain a large number of its own staffers, is the need to get a new business segment up and running quickly, he says.
  [That would actually be the reason for retraining a large number of its own staffers. But this desperate mgmt recruiter has turned it around. Retraining your own staffers also boosts morale and employee innovation. None of this client company's employees have any special motivation but to loot the company as the company is looting them - all thanks to this 'Typhoid Mary' of a mgmt search firm, busily acting as a dumb parasite, the kind that slowly destroys its host.]
  ...One drag on increased hiring is that numerous companies are adding new workers on the one hand while laying off current ones on the other. The [inefficient, wasteful, demoralizing, consumer-market cramping] practice has been going on since downsizing became a fact of corporate life [and death!], but greater performance demands and budget awareness seem to be driving the behavior,
  [no, CEO incompetence is driving the behavior, because lots of workforce churning can be a great distraction from how completely bankrupt you are of ideas - not to mention its intimidation value. There's no company with higher rustbelt performance than Lincoln Electric, and they give their employees a lifetime guarantee of employment to maximize employee innovation - and it's worked.]
  and adding yet another challenge for an already strained workforce.
  [and subtracting yet more confident consumers for already strained CEOs.]
  "You can't just shift (employees) around, although it would be nice,"
  [Of course you can. Humans are the most versatile species on the planet. And all the timesizing companies do it, with great success. Nucor has guys out painting the parking lot if the contracts aren't rolling in. But you wouldn't expect a CEO to admit it when he's in this parasitic business -]
  says John Raeder, president and CEO of IQNavigator Inc., a Denver company that provides software to manage temporary workers and outsourced projects.
  [Again, a company that profits from corporate chaos and doesn't have the sense to realize the deeper self-interest it has in reducing, rather than expanding, that chaos.]
  ...This year, IQNavigator did on a small scale what many larger employers are doing, laying off 10% of its 80-employee staff, before increasing its total head count by about 20%.
  [Truly a blind guide. And it gets worse -]
  In the end, the company laid off U.S. technology workers and hired roughly the same number of workers with similar skills in India.
  [At a tiny fraction of the US wages, thus pushing the US consumer base further and faster along the great downward spiral to the Third World where IQDestructor oops Navigator will have about as many clients as near-sighted North Atlantic fishermen have cod.]
  ...Outplacement firms say they are seeing the hiring-and-firing trend increase. "Companies rarely do redeployments," says Kate Wendleton, president of the Five O'Clock Club, a NY career counseling and outplacement firm. "People are sometimes offered a transfer, but as far as trying to match skills - companies don't have time for that."
  [And soon they won't have markets - for existing.]
  Some experts argue that companies trying to reorient themselves toward long-term goals [are there any such companies??] would do well to consider holding onto staffers and retrain them to avoid the hidden costs of lowered morale and a drain on organizational knowledge. "To introduce wholesale large numbers of people makes it a real struggle to maintain the same culture" at a company, says Nancy Ahlrichs, president of EOC Strategies LLC, an Indianapolis HR consulting company.
  [Finally some wisdom, but then Nancy doesn't have a special interest in workforce churning - she can consult just as much on stable workforces.]
  Many companies also underestimate the expenses of orientation and recruiting that come with major hiring moves.
  If there's any silver lining for workers, it's that layoffs are becoming so routine that they aren't always considered a black mark on a resume....
  [Since when were they considered a black mark on a resume? That would be individual firing for just cause, not mass layoff.]

1. Japan: Resona Holdings Inc...4000 more jobcuts planned, NYT, B4.
2. AT&T Wireless Services...1900-1500= 400 more planned jobcuts, 6.1%...relying on costcuts to increase earnings as sales and subscriber growth slow, Bloomberg via NYT, B5.
3. Cardinal Health to cut 850...already laid off 275, NYT, B3.
4. Tellabs to end all manufacturing and lay off 300 workers, 9%, NYT, B5.
5. Walt Disney Co...258 layoffs, 11/17/2003 WSJ, A17.
6. Adobe Systems Inc...cutting 100 jobs, 3%, NYT, B5.

1. Franklin Mint plans layoffs and product changes, AP via NYT, C3.
   ...A collectibles maker plans to lay off 67% of its employees in suburban Philadelphia.... The company notified 200 workers at its Franklin Center site in Delaware County that they would be dismissed over the next several months.... Weakened by decreasing sales of figurines, Franklin Mint plans to shift its focus to die-cast cars, airplanes, and Harley-Davidson collectibles....

1. Behind China's export boom, heated battle among factories - As Wal-Mart, others demand lowest prices, managers scramble to slash costs, by Peter Wonacott, WSJ, front page.
   SHAJING, China -...It's the survival of the cheapest. At Ching Hai Electric Works Co., manager David Liu has cut his labor force in half, to 1,500 workers, even while maintaining the same level of orders....
   [Ergo 1,500 jobcuts. China is US or England in the 1830s-40s - Dickens' "dark Satanic mills" - little different from slavery. And where we are in unregulated competition against our own past, everyone loses. The huge consumer markets of China's potential are never funded (eg: with wages and salaries) and activated. And the once huge and growing consumer markets of America are gradually defunded and deactivated. Notice that phrase "survival of the cheapest" and use it to squash neo-cons whenever they start claiming "survival of the fittest."]

• India aims to calm U.S. outsourcing fears [and how could they possibly do that?] - Lobbying effort counters complaints about competition for American high-tech jobs [ri-i-ght], WSJ, A4.

• To beat pResident, Democrats hone a 5-point strategy - With Bush vulnerable in poll, party hammers on Iraq, lost manufacturing jobs - 'We can't just call him a liar' [even tho' that's exactly what his ilk called Clinton for less reason?], WSJ, front page.
  [The other 3 points are Bush's character (or lack thereof), 'get out the vote,' and fund raising.]

• Economic scene - Rapid productivity growth [ie: technology] probably did not cause slow post-recession job growth, by Prof. Alan Krueger of Princeton Economics & Public Affairs, NYT, C2.
  [Another caught-in-the-box economist, equipped only with an 18th-century mind, argues against the obvious and against the ecological.]
  ...It has taken at least 20 months from the official end of the recession [with grossly rosying criteria!] for job growth to resume [it hasn't resumed, it's still not up to replacement levels] - 7½ times as long as the average in other postwar recoveries..\.. A popular explanation...is that exceptionally fast productivity growth made hiring workers unnecessary.
  [So great is mainstream economists' brainstem need to support the status quo against any chance of real human progress that they must sneer at any, ugh, popular explanation that comes remotely close to leading us out of the time-blind and self-contradictory quagmire they've so chaotically constructed.]
  On Monday [11/10] pResident Bush endorsed this view, telling BMW workers in Greer SC, "You see, high productivity, it creates a short-term problem, unemployment."
  [Except it's not short-term, unless you want to go with official blinderedness and quit counting it after 26-30 weeks of benefits as it morphs into low-wages, long hours, multiple part-time, underemployment, self-'employment', unplanned retirement, unplanned re-employment along German 'reform' lines ('take any job available!'), disability, homelessness, prison, suicide. Bill Moyers' NOW on Friday (11/14) had a segment on this Bush visit in NC, featuring a headline or editorial of the local newspaper asking who's going to buy their BMWs with all the layoffs going on around there.]
  Implicitly, this view argues that for some reason there are limits to how fast the GDP can grow, so, by definition, faster labor productivity growth results in slower job growth.
  [He's going to assume (1) that pay rises smoothly as a function of productivity growth, as if there's some automatic tie-in between productivity growth and pay growth (which there is under Timesizing), and (2) that consumption rises smoothly as a function of pay growth as if the consumption concentrated pay provides (eg: top executives' pay) is just as strong as the consumption deconcentrated pay provides, and (3) that any hiccoughs in these smooth rises are rendered trivial by population growth, as if we can keep on exploding human population without limits regardless of a finite biosphere and numerous finite subcategories, such as groundwater, forests, fisheries, fossil fuels, ozone, global temperatures.... One gets the impression of an ossified adolescent rebellion against limits, against even the very idea of limits. Note the snideness, the ridicule that creeps in - "for some reason".... What's being mounted here is an extension of the mainstream economists' sneering at those who fall for the Lump of Labor(-Demand) Fallacy (LOLF) - based more on ridicule and rhetoric than reason. They portray themselves as the great futurists who see the infinite bounty of the future served up effortlessly and automatically, with no necessary inconvenience to their own 6-figure salaries or the 7,8,9...-figure incomes of their owners. The LOLF is extremely useful and extendible for stand-patters. It is none other than the G.K. Chesterton Pan-Utopian Flaw. And the irony is that if we share properly (which does require flexible limits, though any limits are anathema to the LOLF sneerers), the golden future assumed by the would-be-futurist LOLF sneerers does open up. For example, along Timesizing lines. But it doesn't happen automatically. And it has distinct minor and major transitions so, it doesn't happen smoothly. And it certainly doesn't happen effortlessly given today's time blindness and the insulation and isolation of today's plutocrats.]
  Many have argued that this predicament afflicted Europe in the 1980s, causing an ailment known as "Euro-sclerosis," or prolonged job stagnation.
  [And this predicament also afflicted America in the 1980s, causing ailments we could call "Pentagonization," wage stagnation, slowing consumption growth, the stock crash of '87, the recession of '90-91, and the whole simplistic, frustrated "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" displacement of anger indiscriminately onto taxes, any taxes (instead of moving taxes from dynamism-supporting deconcentrated income back onto stagnation-supporting concentrated income), and onto crime, however small (zero tolerance, minimum mandatory sentencing, and the resulting giantism of the prison-industrial complex and the costs thereof) and however "lifestyle" and victimless (drugs - 25 years for possession of one ounce - forced confessions and denunciations in poor communities, based on spectral evidence), But Krueger and his ilk conveniently "externalize" all these embarrassments to their self-portrayal as the great golden prophets of a glorious future.]
  ...On examination, rapid productivity growth [notice how carefully he avoids any explicit mention of technology, automation, robotics] is unlikely to account for the dismal job picture in the U.S. over the last 2½ years.
  [This is like a creationist looking only as far back as Sept. 21, 4004 BC. The awesome changes that can arise unnoticeably gradually at the time, but hugely cumulative, are ignored. The industrial-technological revolution has been going on for 200 years, and all this guy wants to look at is the last 2½?! We should at least be looking back to 1917 when Churchill finally conned Wilson into The Great War, and possibly back to 1915 when despite Wilson's avowed pacifism, he jumped in to clean up Haiti (and guarantee the National City Bank of New York's financial interests). The American invasion of Haiti (er, acceptance of some Haitians' invitation to intervene) and subsequent 19-year occupation wasn't exactly the Ol' Rough&Ready's Spanish-American War in Mexico or even TR's Charge Up San Juan Hill in Cuba, but it was sufficient to create a few jobs and make a few military careers and reputations.]
  
  1. ...Monetary and fiscal policy have not restrained growth \so\ there was no reason the GDP could not have grown faster once productivity accelerated.
     [except productivity acceleration met with downsizing and not timesizing, so it did not smoothly, automatically manifest in deconcentrated pay (for non-CEOs), and what manifestation did occur in concentrated pay (for CEOs) did not smoothly, automatically translate into spending dba accelerating-feedback-loop-completing consumer demand. In short, there are a couple of other killer restraints on GDP growth besides monetary and fiscal policy.]
  2. ...In the U.S. greater job growth tends to accompany faster productivity growth, over either a quarter or a year, as well as over longer periods.
     [Maybe if you're fine with McJobs. When are these guys going to correct for job 'quality' - or even just ever-lengthening hours and lowering wages?]
     Productivity growth usually surges at the beginning of a recovery [each surge weaker than the last?], but the job losses are unusual this time [could we say 'cumulating'?]. Furthermore, during the 2nd-longest jobless recovery on record, which occurred during the previous Bush administration, productivity growth was lower than it is now [and also we were worse at counting it], so accelerating productivity is not the only potential cause of a jobless recovery.
     [No, but when responded to with downsizing instead of timesizing, it triggers all the other potential causes. And saying, as here, that rapid productivity is "not the only potential cause of a jobless recovery" actually contradicts the original sweeping claim in the headline that "rapid productivity growth probably did not cause" jobless recovery. Now Krueger the Konfuzed is admitting that it IS a cause - just not the only cause, which nobody is claiming anyway. These guys are getting six-figures and a spot in the NY Times to spread this chaotic biffle? He now parrots yet another chaotomeme -]
  3. Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard [bow down! bow down!] and the National Bureau of Economic Research [aren't these the aveugles who 'officially' date recessions?], raises another [confused] possibility: maybe recoveries that follow longer booms have weaker job growth initially because companies postponed restructuring during the boom.
     [Hello, if they'd call a spade a spade, all would come clear - of course companies "postpone restructuring" (ie: downsizing) during a "boom" because that's what makes it a "boom" - they're UPsizing, not DOWNsizing. And apparently it has dawned on neither Katz nor jammering kid Krueger that maybe the boom (ie: bubble) was longer because the plutocrats are concentrating so much more income that they're getting more desperate to invest it and correspondingly more vulnerable to nutty myths like The New Economy where the innovative technology has such razzle-dazzle, you can go indefinitely without return on investment. Look at Amazon.com. Look at Individual Inc...]
     
  4. Mr. Lewis [not previously introduced] noted that fiscal, monetary and geopolitical environments are much more uncertain now than they were in the 1990s [thanks to the affluents' own dear Bush-Cheney junta in the White House who've made mountains out of molehills].
  5. Another factor is that the Bush taxcuts were aimed not specifically at job creation [like] Jimmy Carter['s] New Jobs Tax Credit [which worked, according to] studies by the economists Jeffrey Perloff, Michael Wachter & John Bishop..\..but at [a little] consumption [which would be the same as aiming at job creation except for the downsizing response to automated production] and [a lot of] savings [and investment, ie: taxcuts for the rich].
  Where will the new jobs come from? This is a question economists grow weary of hearing during recessions.
  [Isn't that too bad. Too bad also that economists aren't hearing the implicit qualifier - where will the good (ie: well-paying) jobs come from? Krueger answers the question only in terms of crummy low-paying McJobs, and only in a way that worsens the multidimensional environmental crisis -]
  I sometimes respond by asking, "Isn't it remarkable that larger countries have more jobs?"
  [He apparently means "larger" in population. We could introduce him to millions of unemployed Chinese who would beg to disagree, with emphasis on the begging.]
  This highlights the role of the workforce in job creation [huh? - this only makes sense if we substitute "population size" for "workforce"], and that, in the long run, employment is largely determined by supply [of labor].
  [Can you believe this? The great Alan B. Krueger says here that the supply of market-demanded jobs is "largely determined" by labor's demand for jobs rather than consumers' demand for products and services that those jobs produce and perform. Wouldn't Malthus be amused to hear thist! Does Krueger perhaps think it works for everything? Is the supply of food, for example, determined largely by the demand for food - and if so, why does starvation exist? Is the supply of money determined largely by the demand for money, and if so, does poverty exist? Is Krueger perhaps a Christian Scientist, adopting Mary Baker Eddy's solution and conveniently denying the existence of evil? Krueger has really lost it here. The scary things is, this kind of happyhappy thinking flows like a river of madness beneath many mainstream economists' pronouncements. It's a variation on the theme of the G.K. Chesterton's Pan-Utopian Flaw. Like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. ("What, me worry?") Newman, Krueger just stands there chirping, "Don't worry, be happy." "It'll all come out in the wash." "The Lord will provide." Never mind those on top followed the modified version, "The Lord helps those who help themselves." And help themselves, they do, to as much as they can. "I want my share, without limit," they say - never minding that the concept of 'limitless' vitiates the concept of one person's 'share.' This whisks us all the way back to the pollyannas early in economic history, like Jean-Baptiste Say, who denied there could be any such thing as a glut because "markets tend to clear." Never mind that this was roundly debunked by the Great Depression, it's ba-a-ack! In Krueger we have another pre-automation 18th-century mind who is embarrassing himself in the 21st century. Let's translate his statement into 21st-century terms. To do this, we must break it into two clauses: "The supply of jobs varies with supply of labor hours and the supply of labor hours is largely determined by the demand for labor hours." It is true that the supply of labor hours is still largely determined by the demand for labor hours, but labor hours are now supplied not only by humans but also by machines, such as computers and robots. So the supply of jobs for humans no longer varies with the supply of market-demanded labor hours, because technology can supply an increasing number of those labor hours. Not satisfied with his current embarrassment, Krueger pushes on -]
  Looking across countries over 5-year periods, the growth in the working-age population is a powerful predictor of job growth, especially in the U.S.
  [Gee, could that possibly be explained by the need of most people, unlike Krueger, to earn their own living and do something, ANYthing, no matter how unworthy of being called a "job" - to support themselves? Prostitution, bookie-ing, drug dealing, what have you - Krueger apparently has absolutely no interest in the quality of "jobs" - if people manage SOMEHOW to survive, to scrape out an existence without tossing in the towel completely, losing home and address, and becoming homeless or committing suicide, this low-expectations Krueger will count it as a "job." This is the ilk of economist that is serving no purpose but to prop the status quo and stifle progress. Then comes the complacent statement of faith again, essentially a patronizing head-patting "It'll be all right, dear" -]
  Our strong job growth in the 1990s [what's so strong about the downsizing that was rolling through the 90s and accelerating into the 00s?] is also a useful reminder that job growth does eventually resume after recessions, provided the population is growing.
  [One of the main points of raising living standards for real futurists is the seemingly automatic limitation of births. By advocating for population growth regardless of ecological limits (ozone, global warming, ground water, acid rain, forest&fishery depletion...), Krueger evidently advocates frozen or lower living standards. Well, that would be consistent with his apparent disregard for quality of job created we suppose. Why are so many mediocre minds like this still employed in our universities? He then wastes several paragraphs discussing what sectors - not what wage levels, not what skill areas - where job growth will occur. What a no-op. His false conclusion -]
  Most important, the skills of the workforce will largely determine the mix of jobs people hold, and the standard of living they enjoy.
  [In other words, your Masters degree in Latin or your skill at constructing spinning wheels or buggy whips will largely determine your job and your standard of living, never mind lack of demand for your skills and never mind, relative to your living standard, if there is an over-supply of your skill. What utter and complete drivel this man spews.]
  Thus, the projected slowdown in the educational attainment of the workforce, unless counteracted, does not bode well.
  [Never mind the job-market irrelevance of much education (see makework area #20) , and never mind the consequent gradual shift from education to training.]
  Additionally, the projected slowdown in the growth of the working-age population should lead to slower job growth.
  [Ridiculous - immigrants, legal and otherwise, are pouring in. And a much more ominous, and by Krueger completely unacknowledged cause oops 'co-relative' of slower job growth is the trend toward longer working hours per person. But like most caught-in-the-box mainstream economists, Krueger probably not only disregards the crucial worktime dimension but ridicules anyone who bothers with it. How ironic. As the supremely quantitative discipline, economics should be centered on the general quantifier of all activity or inactivity on the surface of this planet, that is, the concept of time.]
  For this reason the focus should shift to the growth in jobs per member of the working-age population.
  [What a bizarrely contorted statement. It would seem to endorse the situation of overloaded contingent workers who have multiple part-time jobs with no benefits.]
  ...It is possible that we may experience a period of "U.S.-sclerosis," as Ronald Schettkat, an economist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, suggests in a new study....
  [Judging from all the working-age population that the U.S. is wasting and warehousing in unemployment, welfare, disability, homelessness, prison, and the milder misfortunes of premature retirement, and forced unretirement, U.S.-sclerosis has been with us for at least two decades. But of course, happy simpleton Krueger simply externalizes all those problems and keeps cheerleading.]

1. First profit since 2001 is tied to strong memory-chip unit, WSJ, A12.
   Infineon Technologies AG posted a profit...amid a revival in memory-chip prices and cost cuts.... The results are a further sign that chipmakers are back on track after more than two years of feeble demand and overcapacity sent losses spiraling. In their latest quarterly reports,
   • Hynix Semiconductor Inc. returned a profit
   • and Micron Technology Inc. pared losses.
   In a bid to emerge from the slump in better shape than some of its rivals, Infineon shed about 6,000 jobs and invested in technology to produce less-expensive memory chips....
   [The devastating effects of the downsizing response to technology, instead of timesizing, don't get any clearer than this. Where now those who prate that "technology creates more jobs than it destroys"? Not if met with downsizing rather than timesizing it doesn't!]

2. Some nonunion jobs to be cut as part of restructuring plan, WSJ, A12.
   CSX Corp...the Jacksonville FL railroad..\..will cut 800 to 1,000 non-union employees over the next six months, as part of a plan to streamline its management structure and to create a smaller organization. ...The company decided to streamline its management structure to no more than 8 layers from as many as 11 layers....
   [They've been reading 1980s books admiring Japanese bunchin management structure (flat like a "bun-chin," an old-fashioned, calligrapher's paperweight).]
   CSX has about 34,000 workers....
   [So this is a 1000/34000= 3% downsizing.]

1. Mining again in a Montana town that's fallen on hard times - A city plagued by job losses and festering toxic waste, by Jim Robbins, NYT, A8.
   BUTTE, Mont. - ...The demise this year of Montana Power, the state's largest electric company, was the worst economic news in recent years. Montana Power was an economic mainstay here for decades, with more than 500 high-paying jobs....

2. Bank of America Corp., WSJ, C8.
   ...is laying off nearly 100 employees as part of a cost-cutting move.... The cuts, which represent approximately 1.5% of the unit's total workforce of 6,400, began on Labor Day and will last through the end of the year.... The jobcuts aren't related to Bank of America's plans to purchase FleetBoston Financial Corp. for $44B..\..a spokeswoman for the Charlotte NC bank...Tara Burke...said....
   [Oh no? It may be indirect but we call it another case of the suicidal takeover-downsizing syndrome. $44 billion they can afford for a risky takeover and they can't afford to stabilize their employment?]

3. U.S. closing Saudi offices, AP via NYT, A6.
   RIYADH, Saudi Arabia...- The United States will close its [diplomatic] missions in Saudi Arabia on Saturday for an undetermined period because of "credible" information that terrorists are about to carry out attacks, the American Embassy here said Friday [11/07]. The embassy said the missions in Riyadh, Jidda and Dhahran would close....
   [Unspecified local job losses.]

1. Johnson & Johnson, NYT, C3.
   ...New Brunswick NJ [will] shift manufacturing operations at its North Brunswick plant to outside contractors and eliminate 490 jobs; 600 employees [in] other units will continue working at the plant.
   [490/(490+600)= 490/1090= a 45% plant downsizing.]

2. General Electric, NYT, C3.
   ...Fairfield CT, said its Employers Reinsurance unit would stop selling life insurance in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Asia Pacific region, eliminating 90 jobs.

1. AmerisourceBergen Corp. - Net income increases by 26% on drug-distribution growth, WSJ, C13.
   ...In the latest quarter, the Chesterbrook, Pa., company booked a charge of $1.5m...for facility consolidations and employee severance....

1. Tyco International posts loss, will cut 7,200 jobs...3%, WSJ, A3.
2. Southwest Airlines to close 3 phone centers...1,900 employees to relocate or sever, WSJ, D8.
3. Lubrizol Corp...150 layoffs, WSJ, C11.

1. Applica Inc, Miami Lakes FL maker of electric consumer goods...3,875 jobcuts...25%, WSJ, A15.
   ...downsizing its US HQ & closing 2 factories in China while yet moving there some production from US & Mexico....
2. Alitalia...1500 layoffs and 1200 outsourcings [total 2700], WSJ, A15.
3. Elizabeth Arden Inc...100 jobcuts...10% in US, NYT, C4.
4. Chautauqua County NY...20% layoff [unspecified cuts], NYT, A25.

• "Union merger [Assoc. of Flight Attendants (AFA) and Communications Workers of America] awaits attendants' approval," 11/03/2003 WSJ, B4, which states, "AFA has lost 10,000 members in the past 2 years to layoffs."
• "The white-collar job [e]migration - As economy gains, outsourcing surges," 11/02/2003 Boston Globe, front page.
  [...thus ensuring the gains will be brief]
• "US workers see hard times - High-tech firms tout outsourcing as crucial to survival," by Chris Gaither, 11/03/2003 Boston Globe, front page.
  ..."Right when you think about Employee 11, you should think about India," said Ravi Chirovolu, a general partner with Charter Venture Capital, a Palo Alto CA firm.... "You should not start a company from scratch in the United States ever again."...
• "My job prospects (I'm 56)," letter to editor by Steve Rosenberg of Montclair NJ, 11/03/2003 NYT, A20.
  ...I have devoted more than 30 years to a career in data processing.... At my age, retraining will take time and money.
  [Not if we modernize the economy with automatic overtime-to-OJT conversion, OJT being on-the-job training.]
  Even with that, I will face a tough job search for a low-paying, entry-level position. Then...if I'm lucky enough to find continuous employment
  [No problem if we modernize the economy with automatic un(der)employment-countering workweek adjustment.]
  ..\..I will probably have to work till the day I die....
  [Not so bad if we flex up our frozen 1940-era workweek to take advantage of inrushing worksaving technology that we now counter with pre-emptive war, makework, permanent disability and prison, and settle into a routine of restored 2-day weekends, incrementing to 3-day and 4-day weekends - so we can "retire" every week - and merge our agist "retirement" concept into a new energetically rehabilitative disability system, with a growing guild of job designers to keep rolling back, e.g., with Stephen Hawking's high-tech disability-cutting equipment.] ) -

1. ChevronTexaco Corp...2,000 cuts...3.9% of its 53,000 workforce...to streamline, WSJ, A10.
2. Oneida Ltd...close one 450-employee plant in Buffalo NY & four ??-employee plants in Mexico, China & Italy, WSJ, A11, //NYT B5 '350'.
3. Everlast Worldwide Inc...boxing equipment, South Bronx...100 lose jobs, NYT, B17.

Click here for downsizing stories in -
Oct/2003.
Sept/2003.
Aug.16-31/2003.
Aug.1-15/2003.
July/2003.
Jun.17-30/2003.
Jun.3-16/2003.
May/2003 (+Jun.1-2).
Apr.16-30/2003.
Apr.1-15/2003.
March/2003.
Feb.16-28/2003.
Feb.1-15/2003.
Jan.16-31/2003.
Jan.1-15/2003.
Dec/2002.
Nov.16-29/2002.
Nov.1-15/2002.
Oct.16-31/2002.
Oct.1-15/2002.
Sept/2002.
Aug.16-31/2002.
Aug.1-15/2002.
July/2002.
June/2002.
May/2002.
Apr/2002.
Mar/2002.
Feb/2002.
Jan. 16-31/2002.
Jan. 1-15/2002.
Dec. 16-31/2001.
Earlier 2001 downsizings accessible via links at bottom of Dec.16-31/2001 page.
Dec.16-31/2000.
Earlier Y2000 downsizings accessible via links at bottom of Dec.16-31/2000 page.
Dec/1999.
Earlier 1999 months accessible via links at bottom of Dec/1999 page.
December/98.
Earlier months accessible via links at bottom of Dec/98 page.

For more details, our laypersons' guide to our great economic future Timesizing, Not Downsizing is available at bookstores in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. or from *Amazon.com online.

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