By Ben | September 16, 2009
Time for our quarterly look at unemployment with the news that in the three months to July the total number of jobless rose by a massive (and scary) 210,000, the equivalent of the entire population of an outer London borough.
Over to you Lord Sugar: ”Hounslow…you’re fired.”
A worrying piece in Personnel Today quotes both John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI with the same observation: that the much touted creative alternatives to redundancy (e.g. 4 day weeks and job sharing) may only serve to delay redundancies rather than prevent them altogether. [...]
A further illustration of the paucity of new jobs about comes in the announcement by Diageo that it was to ‘create’ 400 new jobs at the same time as it made 900 redundancies, which is beginning to unravel. As this report in the Daily Record shows, many of those new jobs are in fact [...]
Another sector, another business shutdown. Today’s news that the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society is to close its branch network with the loss of 1,660 jobs is terrible news for the economy. More high street premises will now stand empty and more people will join the list of unemployed. Following so close on the heels of [...]
More bad news for the UK’s manfacturing sector with the collapse today of van maker LDV with the loss of 4,000 jobs. As the FT reports, this follows LDV’s attempt to secure government aid of £20-£30m, which was ultimately unsuccessful. While Lord Mandelson’s refusal to offer a bail-out might seem hard hearted, it must be [...]
One of my top recommended reads is The McKinsey Quarterly, which succeeds in combining well-written analysis of current business issues with a fresh take on how opportunities are presenting themselves, often through new technologies. This article entitled ‘upgrading talent‘ from Dec. 2008 shows the importance of promoting your talents within your current role: when redundancies [...]
Posted in Post-Trivialism | Also tagged Competencies |
The economy may be equally bad in the US, but that doesn’t stop our American cousins taking a positive attitude to personal predicaments. Fast taking hold are ‘pink slips parties‘, which before anyone asks do not necessitate wearing pink lingerie. Rather, these are named after the pink slips that employees receive in the States to notify [...]
Posted in Job Hunter, Posts | Also tagged Networking |
The Daily Telegraph’s jobs’ monitor makes for pretty grim reading, especially when you realize that the total number of jobs lost (the actual number is currently 102,183) have all gone in the last 4 months. Not only does that mean that there are 100,000 fewer people in work and a corresponding number of businesses that are [...]
Posted in Economy, Posts | Tagged Redundancy |
By Ben | February 24, 2009
All of a sudden the spectre of redundancy looms everywhere across the economy. And for some it has already become a grim reality. So what can be done by those who fear for their jobs? A pessimist might say ‘there’s nothing you can do - if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen’. But [...]
Posted in Posts | Tagged Redundancy |
