Microsoft’s long rumored job cuts are no longer a rumor, with the company announcing plans to cut as many as 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months—about 5-percent of its worldwide workforce—in the wake of a weaker than expected earnings report and what Steve Ballmer called “the most challenging economic climate we have ever faced.”
Sure, these layoffs are a helluva lot less than the massive, 17-percent reduction some rumormongers had predicted, but that’s little solace to the 1,400 workers laid off today, the majority of whom had been working in Redmond.
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…
Permalink | Leave a Comment | RSSShare 2 Responses to “Big job losses at NW tech firms”
1. slingshot spews:
Will the last person out of Redmond please turn the lights off?
01/22/2009 at 9:23 am
2. NWRailfan spews:
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 is going to be priming the economic pump around here in a massive way this year, just like last 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.
Microsoft had also previously announced that its present orgy of new-facility construction is coming to an immediate halt. I don’t know whether that means they’re going to just stop work on all the sites in Redmond that at the moment range from holes in the ground to nearly completed buildings. It was, however, made clear that any projects in the planning stages are “indefinitely postponed”.
The effect of this on the local commercial construction industry and all the workers therein involved should be obvious. To be sure, any public projects are going to be able to avail themselves of a ready labor pool.
Unsubstantiated News Item:
The outgoing Bush administration had plans in place for an aircraft carrier to be named after him, just as one was named for Ronald Reagan. But the trillion(s) wasted in Iraq and elsewhere left little room in the defense budget for a new appropriation for an additional aircraft carrier.
So here’s how the Defense Dept. has accomodated the outgoing Bush administration. I present to you, the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. George W. Bush:
USS George W. Bush
Why not drive over to MS and talk to some employees, then add what they said to this blog post?
@2 I understand that they’re going to finish what they’ve started on the west campus and elsewhere. I also read that MS anticipates about three years idleness on the construction front. For a lot of people the implications of this really isn’t so obvious. It’s a big hit on the commercial construction side of things.