Microsoft ouch.
Microsoft Corp. said Thursday morning it would lay off up to 5,000 employees, or 5 percent of its work force, over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today, marking the first time in its history that it has laid off workers across the company.
The announcement came as Microsoft posted quarterly results far short of analysts’ and its own expectations.
—snip—
The company said that jobs would be eliminated in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources, and IT. At the same time, the company said it would continue to hire in other areas, including its search business, so its work force would actually fall by between 2,000 and 3,000.
And Intel ouch.
Intel will close an aging computer chip factory in Hillsboro late this year, eliminating 1,000 positions as it ratchets back production in response to a spectacular decline in sales.
The 12-year-old facility, known as Fab 20, is one of five sites worldwide that Intel will shutter in 2009. As many as 6,000 workers will lose their jobs globally, about 7 percent of Intel’s total work force.
People have less money, they buy less stuff, then people lose jobs, meaning they have less money and buy less stuff…
Will the last person out of Redmond please turn the lights off?
Those job losses, while disruptive in the short-term to those impacted, will be more than offset by the hiring at Sound Transit. Just look at ’08 – after the $450M in bonds were sold right before last year began ST’s contractors hired 40,000 workers. Those are high-paying, family wage union jobs.
ST is set to do even more of the same this year. Another $600M in bonds will be sold in November. Couple THAT with the additional $600M in ’09 tax revenue. The $1.1 billion in spending the 2009 budget calls for projected additional tax revenue is going to be priming the economic pump around here in a massive way this year.
The new hiring will be another 40,000 FTE’s in 2009. The ripple effects due to the shovel-ready projects being fully funded will put the brakes on the economic slide in this region, and turn things sharply around.
Yes, a few private sector jobs are going away. But that’s really nothing more than the hangover from the Repukelican Party control in DC for the past 8 years. It will take some time for that to be flushed from the economic system. But shortly we’ll have the infrastructure on-line to support and amplify the inevitable private sector economic rebound.
I’m rather staggered at how quickly things have been heading south with the economy. Just last month we were getting the first real indication of layoffs here in the Seattle area, and now it seems to be a flood. 5,000 from Boeing, another 5,000 from Microsoft.
Last monday night the pizza restaurant where my Men’s Bible Study meets let us know that they would be closing by the end of the month. Then last night having dinner with my wife at the Keg in Everett, we were told that location would also be closed sometime next week. I’m sure these aren’t the only ones, but it’s kindof scary to see how fast the ripples are spreading.
This is getting too ugly.
“People have less money, they buy less stuff, then people lose jobs, meaning they have less money and buy less stuff.”
The logical continuation of which is: And then liberals whine about the possibility of a tax cut and instead promote the idea of extra taxes to pay for giveaways to people whose only skill is comfortably sitting on their ass.