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在美国公司裁员的时候，谁最先走呢？

Broader, Deeper Job Cuts Risk Steepening Slump
2008年10月24日

Employers grappling with the financial crisis and a slowing economy are accelerating and broadening job cuts in multiple industries, potentially deepening the economic downturn.

Xerox Corp., General Motors Corp. and bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. disclosed new job cuts Thursday, following layoff announcements earlier in the week by Chrysler LLC, Merck & Co. and Yahoo Inc., among others. The economic slowdown, previously concentrated among housing- and finance-related employers, is spreading to once-sheltered sectors like health care and technology.

‘As the overall economy weakens, even those not in the epicenter of the shock will start seeing losses,’ said Zach Pandl, an economist with Barclays Capital. Barclays economists expect U.S. payrolls, which have dropped 760,000 jobs so far this year, to shrink about 200,000 a month through the middle of next year.

That will likely push the unemployment rate, now 6.1%, to 7% or 8%, above the 6.3% peak in the last economic downturn. That high came in June 2003, 18 months after the recession was technically over.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the number of mass layoffs in September — defined as instances in which employers cut 50 or more jobs — rose to 2,269, the most since September 2001.

While the job market has been deteriorating over the past year, analysts say employers are now beginning to eliminate jobs more quickly than in past downturns, in part because of the uncertainties created by the credit crunch and volatile financial markets.

Employers want to ‘get ahead of the curve’ of a weakening economy, said Bernadette Kenny, senior vice president of human resources at Adecco Group North America, a unit of Adecco SA, the world’s biggest staffing company. Adecco itself said last week it would cut 600 jobs in France. The company has eliminated a small number of U.S. and Canadian jobs this year, but Ms. Kenny said she still has openings, particularly in engineering. In past downturns, she said, companies ‘would go into the misery zone’ before laying off workers.

Not this time. Xerox Chief Executive Anne Mulcahy said Thursday that the company’s financial position ‘remains strong,’ even as she announced plans to cut 5% of the work force, or about 3,000 jobs. She said the cuts would help Xerox deliver ‘double-digit earnings growth in 2009.’ Chief Financial Officer Larry Zimmerman said the cuts would affect most divisions except sales, as well as many parts of the globe.

The Xerox cuts were the latest sign of growing unease in technology. Last month, Hewlett-Packard Co. said it would cut 24,600 employees, or 7.5% of its work force, as it sought to integrate its acquisition of tech-consulting company Electronic Data Systems Corp. Dell Inc. Chief Executive Michael Dell said this week his company has laid off about 8,900 workers world-wide, or about 10% of its work force, since last year.

Tuesday, Internet giant Yahoo said it would lay off 10%, or roughly 1,500, of its employees by year end. The cuts are part of Yahoo’s broader plans to reorganize, but executives said they would also help the company weather the economic downtown, which is hurting its display-advertising business.

Start-ups, too, are trimming payrolls. Internet companies Mahalo, Imeem and AdBrite have laid off 10% to 40% of their staffs. The numbers involved are relatively small. But start-up executives said they are acting pre-emptively, to avoid repeating the mistakes of small companies earlier in the decade that died after not cutting quickly and deeply enough.

The downturn is ‘much worse than I thought it would be, and ignoring market conditions today would only mean deeper cuts down the road,’ Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis wrote in a blog post Thursday.

In another ominous sign, UPMC, the big Pittsburgh-ba<x>sed hospital system, said this week it was laying off 500 employees as part of continuing cost-savings initiatives. The layoffs are almost entirely ‘nonclinical’ and are coming from all parts of the hospital network, which employs about 50,000.

The health-care industry had been one of the few bright spots in the national economy, adding roughly 360,000 jobs over the past year. Layoffs at hospitals are bad news for regions like Pittsburgh, which have increasingly come to rely on medical and university jobs to help offset the erosion of jobs in the region’s old-line industries.

Drug makers, which have been paring costs for years, are now broadening the scope to include executives and researchers.

Merck, which has eliminated 10,400 jobs over the past three years, said Wednesday it will cut 7,200 positions, or 12% of its work force, by the end of 2011. The layoffs will touch every part of the company, from sales representatives to researchers, and a quarter will be mid- and senior-level executives. The company is closing labs in Seattle, Japan and Italy.

Chief Executive Richard Clark said the latest cost-cutting wasn’t a reaction to the company’s 28% decline in third-quarter profit but part of longstanding efforts to reposition Merck for a new era.

Spreading layoffs could further exacerbate weakness in consumer spending, the largest driver of U.S. economic growth, and delay any recovery. ‘A weak labor market makes consumers and businesses even less creditworthy and causes lenders to pull back even further,’ says Barclay’s Mr. Pandl.

The government said Thursday that the number of new claims for unemployment benefits last week rose by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 478,000

In a sign of weakness in the consumer economy, Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world’s largest soft-drink bottler, said on Thursday it has laid off more than 1,000 people, primarily from management ranks, in its North American operations since Labor Day. The bottler has been struggling to revive soft-drink sales in the U.S.

Many manufacturers, meanwhile, says they have seen a sudden drop in orders and are quickly moving to cut jobs to avoid building up inventories. Makers of construction machinery, powerboats, appliances and copper pipe are among those shedding workers.

Pipe-coupling maker Victaulic Co. of America last week said it would eliminate 100 jobs at a Pennsylvania factory that typically employs more than 1,000 people. The company said the action was ‘in response to a precipitous decline in our business over the last 30 days.’

Companies that serve the housing sector are growing even more pessimistic as a recovery recedes further into the future. Window maker Silver Line Building Products disclosed Monday it would close a North Carolina plant by year-end and lay off 428 workers because of slow sales. The company will shift production to plants in New Jersey and Georgia but won’t add workers there, a spokeswoman says.

Meanwhile, at the center of the economic crisis, financial companies continue to lay off thousands of workers. Cleveland-ba<x>sed National City Corp. said this week it would eliminate 4,000 jobs, or 14% of its work force. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is preparing to lay off 10% of its 32,500 employees, according to people familiar with the matter. And Bank of America Corp. is expected to lay off thousands of workers as it completes its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. The financial-services industry has lost 172,000 jobs since December 2006, according to the Labor Department.

Companies overseas are cutting employees, too. In France, layoff plans have become a fixture on the morning news. Last month, car maker Renault SA said it would shed 6,000 jobs in Europe, citing difficult market conditions. This week, mail-order group La Redoute, part of retail giant PPR SA, announced 580 layoffs.

Kelly Evans / Joann S. Lublin / Timothy Aeppel / Jonathan D. Rockoff

裁员风潮愈演愈烈 经济下滑可能加剧
2008年10月24日

在多个行业，苦于应对金融危机和经济放缓的雇主们纷纷加快裁员速度、扩大裁员范围，进而有可能加剧经济的下滑。

施乐公司(Xerox Corp.)、通用汽车公司(General Motors Corp.)和装瓶企业Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.周四均宣布裁员；本周早些时候克莱斯勒(Chrysler LLC)、默克公司(Merck & Co. Inc.)和雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)等公司已经宣布了裁员。此前还只是局限在房地产和金融相关企业的经济放缓目前正向医疗和科技等一度安全的行业扩散。

Barclays Capital的经济学家扎克·潘德尔(Zach Pandl)说，随着整体经济的疲软，即使是那些不是处于风暴中心的企业也会开始蒙受损失。该公司经济学家预计，至明年年中，美国的就业人数每月将约减少 200,000人；今年以来美国就业人数已经减少了760,000人。

这很可能会将失业率从目前的6.1%推高至7%或8%，超过上次经济低迷时期6.3%的最高水平。当时是在2003年6月，在衰退结束18个月之后。

美国劳工部周三称，9月份大规模裁员次数增加至2,269次，是2001年9月以来最多的。大规模裁员即企业裁减50个甚至更多的岗位。

分析师说，就业市场在过去一年中持续恶化，现在企业开始比以往经济低迷时裁员更快，原因之一是信贷危机和动荡的金融市场带来的不确定性。

世界最大的人力资源公司Adecco SA旗下Adecco Group North America负责人力资源的高级副总裁伯纳蒂特·肯尼(Bernadette Kenny)说，雇主们希望能赶在不断疲软的经济前面。Adecco上周表示，将在法国裁减600个岗位。该公司今年已经裁减了一小部分美国和加拿大的职位，不过肯尼说她还在招人，特别是工程人员。她说，在过去历次经济低迷时，企业都是在万不得已的时候才开始裁员。

不过现在是今非昔比了。施乐首席执行长安妮·莫西卡(Anne Mulcahy)周四在宣布计划裁员5%，也就是约3,000个岗位是还说，该公司的财务状况保持强劲。她说，裁员会帮助施乐在2009年实现两位数的收益增长。该公司首席财务长拉里·齐莫曼(Larry Zimmerman)说，裁员将影响销售之外的大部分部门，而且会涉及到全球很多地区。

施乐的裁员再次显示了科技行业的不安日益加剧。上个月，惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard Co.)称，由于在努力整合收购的技术咨询公司电子资讯系统(Electronic Data Systems Corp.)的业务，该公司将裁减24,600名员工，即员工总数的7.5%。戴尔公司(Dell Inc.)首席执行长迈克尔·戴尔(Michael Dell)本周说，该公司自去年以来已经在全球范围裁减了约8,900名员工，即员工总数的约10%。

互联网巨头雅虎周二称，年底前将裁员10%，约1,500人。这次裁员是雅虎重组计划的一部分，不过该公司的高管们说，这还会帮助公司度过经济低迷。雅虎的互联网广告业务已经开始受此影响。

新创企业也纷纷裁员。互联网公司Mahalo、Imeem和AdBrite已经裁掉了10%-40%的员工。裁员人数相对较少。不过新创企业的高管们说，他们是在未雨绸缪，以避免重蹈本世纪初小企业的覆辙。当时小企业因为没有迅速大幅裁员而纷纷倒闭。

Mahalo首席执行长杰森·卡拉卡尼斯(Jason Calacanis)周四在一篇博客文章中写道，这次低迷比我想像的要严重的多，现在忽视市场状况只会意味着未来更大幅度的裁员。

匹兹堡地区大医院UPMC本周说，作为其继续削减成本计划的一部分，将裁员500人。这次裁员基本都是在非临床人员中间进行，涉及医院网络的所有分支。其网络员工总数约50,000人。这是又一个不详的征兆。

医疗保健行业之前一直是全美经济领域少有的几个亮点之一，过去一年新增就业人数大约360,000人。医疗系统开始裁员对匹兹堡这样的地区是个坏消息。随着该地区传统行业岗位的逐渐流失，这些地区越来越依赖医疗和大学里的职位来支撑经济。

多年来一直在削减成本的制药企业现在开始将裁员范围扩大到管理和研究人员。

过去3年里削减了10,400个岗位的医药巨头默克(Merck)周三说，到2011年之前将裁减7,200个岗位，占其员工数的12%。裁员将涉及公司各个部门，既有销售代表，也有研发人员，其中四分之一将是中、高层管理人员。默克即将关闭在西雅图、日本和意大利的实验室。

默克首席执行长克拉克(Richard Clark)说，最新这波削减成本计划并不是针对公司三季度利润下滑的，这是默克为实现公司的新规划而制定的长期计划的一部分。

裁员风的蔓延可能导致作为美国经济增长最大推动力的消费开支进一步走软，并拖延经济复苏的到来。巴克莱的潘德尔说，劳动力市场疲软将使消费者和企业信用下降，并导致金融机构更加不愿放贷。

美国政府周四公布，上周的首次申请失业救济人数增加15,000人，经季节因素调整后为478,000人。

作为消费疲软的一个迹象，全球最大的软饮料瓶装厂Coca-Cola Enterprises周四说，自劳工节以来已在北美业务部门裁减1,000多名员工，主要涉及管理岗位。该公司一直竭力振兴在美国的软饮料销售。

与此同时，许多制造商表示，他们的订单开始出现突然下降，现在正在迅速采取裁员行动，以避免库存积压。采取行动的包括建筑设备、汽艇、家电和铜管等行业。

管道连接件制造商Victaulic Co.上周说，将在宾夕法尼亚一家工厂裁员100人，这家工厂通常员工数超过1,000人。该公司表示，裁员是针对过去30天来业务急剧下滑而采取的行动。

随着复苏前景愈加遥远，住房市场相关企业变得越来越悲观。门窗制造商Silver Line Building Products公布说，由于销售放缓，年底前将关闭位于北卡罗来纳州的一家工厂，并解雇428名工人。公司一位发言人说，将把生产转移到新泽西州和乔治亚州的工厂，但不会因此在当地增加人手。

与此同时，处于经济危机风暴中心的金融行业仍在裁减数千员工。克利夫兰的National City Corp.银行这周说，将裁减4,000个职位，占其员工总数的14%。据知情人士透露，高盛(Goldman Sachs Group)准备在其32,500名员工中裁员10%。随着美国银行(Bank of America Corp.)接管美林(Merrill Lynch)的工作即将完成，预计美国银行也将裁减数千员工。据美国劳工部公布，自2006年12月以来，金融服务业裁员数已达172,000个。

海外公司也在裁减员工。在法国，裁员已成为早间新闻的常见话题，汽车制造商雷诺(Renault SA)上个月说，因市场情况不佳，将在欧洲裁员6,000人。本周，零售巨头PPR SA下属的邮购公司La Redoute宣布裁员580人。

Kelly Evans / Joann S. Lublin / Timothy Aeppel / Jonathan D. Rockoff