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October 05, 2004

Job Cuts Surge in Sept.

Report: U.S. job cuts at eight-month high in Sept.:

Planned job cuts soared to an eight-month high in September while new hiring rose only slightly, a report said Tuesday.
Employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said employers announced 107,863 layoffs in September, 41% more than in September 2003 and 45% more than in August of this year, when 74,150 were laid off.

Adding to the glum jobs picture was the slow pace of hiring in September. The report said employer hiring announcements revealed only 16,166 new job openings in that month compared with 132,105 in August.

We'll see what the full job report looks like on Friday, but the bottom line is that this economy continues to be sickly.

Update: The White House looks to be engineering a nice partisan spin on the jobs report. As the same time the largely non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its monthly jobs report, the Council of Economic Advisers will release a report estimating that there were an as many as 384,000 additional jobs created in the last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

If the jobs numbers stink for September, I'm sure the goal is to have headlines talking up job creation in the hundreds of thousands drowning out any anemic September numbers.

Posted by Nathan at October 5, 2004 12:36 PM

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