Have you been fired? Here are some financial tips to consider
Employees are often caught off guard when a layoff occurs, and these tips may be helpful if you find yourself in such a situation.
america today
Employers announced 108,435 layoffs in January, the highest number for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report published on February 5, indicating that employers may be taking defensive measures against economic uncertainty.
The report, released by global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, echoes other data released on February 5 that suggests the labor market is cooling. The number of applications for unemployment benefits rose in the past week, and the number of job openings fell in December.
“Typically, the number of layoffs in the first quarter is high, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger said in a release accompanying the company’s report.
Employers’ hiring plans are also at their lowest since 2009, at the end of the Great Recession, when unemployment was near double digits, Challenger said. The plan to hire 5,306 people announced in January was half of the 10,496 people announced in December, more than doubling the number of job cuts.
Job market data suggests a slowdown…but how fast?
Due to the brief government shutdown in early January, the Department of Labor’s payroll report will not be released this Friday as scheduled. As a result, analysts and investors have begun to closely monitor other indicators of economic and employment conditions.
The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits has also spiked in recent weeks, the Labor Department announced on February 5. Many economists and other analysts believe that “initial claims” are the best real-time information on the job market because they are published frequently, but they can also cause results to vary widely.
Meanwhile, the number of job openings continues to decline, reaching 6.5 million in December, according to the Ministry of Labor’s Job Openings and Turnover Report. Although so-called JOLTS reports are considered comprehensive, they are not timely as they take time to produce.
Taken together, the morning’s numbers highlighted a clear lack of consensus among economic watchers.
“After several weeks of unusually low levels due to low seasonal hiring in the fourth quarter and therefore an unusually low number of layoffs in January, initial claims numbers have returned to trend,” economists at Pantheon Macro said in a note shortly after the report was released.
However, he added, “We continue to believe that the unemployment rate will continue to rise gradually through the first half of this year.”
Christopher Rapkey, chief economist at market research firm FWDBONDS LLC, takes a more pessimistic view. “In October, there were 7.4 million job openings, but in December that number has fallen to just 6.5 million,” he wrote. “This is exactly what happens in a recession, where demand for labor evaporates overnight, and it would be a miracle if the economy wasn’t so close to the brink of recession.”
