The National Retail Federation has issued a prediction that may not come as a surprise to many struggling retailers and cash-strapped consumers: holiday retail industry sales will decline this year for a second year in a row. According to the NRF, consumer fears over job security and home values are the main forces that will drive down consumer spending this year.
The trade group’s forecast predicts that sales in the months of November and December will decline about 1 percent from 2008 to $437.6 billion, which would still be a significant improvement over last year’s decline of 3.4 percent. However, these …read more

While recent reports showed that August was the best month in a long time as far as the rate of job losses goes, analysts expect that the unemployment rate will not shrink back down to a normal 5 percent until 2014. Currently, the unemployment rate sits at 9.7 percent, up a staggering amount from its position only two years ago at 4.7 percent.
The unemployment rate could continue to soar into the double digits by the end of 2009, breaking 10 percent and signaling truly dire straits for the economy. According to the Department of Labor, the number of job seekers …read more

Monster Worldwide, the parent company for a variety of websites such as Monster.com, Military.com, Tickle.com, Fastweb.com and HMForces.co.uk, saw its revenue plummet in the first quarter of 2009. Considering that their main property is Monster.com and unemployment is at a high not seen in decades, it’s not surprising that the parent company is struggling.
For the quarter ending on March 31st, Monster Worldwide had revenue around $254 million. In the first quarter of 2008, the company had revenue of more than $365 million. The fall from last year to this year was over 30%.
Profit, as would be expected, also was down. …read more

Rumors began circulating last month about IBM and Sun Microsystems merger, and such a deal seems eminent  pending exact terms and price. However, not everyone is seeing a deal between the companies as a good thing. Because there is significant overlap in the companies’ businesses, a merger could be thousands of layoffs, mostly of Sun Microsystems employees.
According to reports, IBM could lay off up to a third of Sun’s employees, putting more than 10,000 people out of work. Some IBM jobs may also be at risk, and Sun employees may be retained and IBM workers are laid off as redundancies. …read more

If you have been laid off, I know you need support. The Layoff Network is a site designed to help people with the other aspects of being jobless: money, health, stress and they will help you with your job search. According to The Layoff Support Network, they were created to help people who have lost their jobs due to either the down-turn of the economy or the greediness of big business. With record numbers of people being laid off, the skills required to survive unexpected unemployment have changed. The job market is flooded with highly qualified people and the competition …read more

It is no longer an employee’s job market – it’s all about the employer. In this crazy economy, employers are laying people off in record numbers without a whole lot of thought and certainly no guilt or compassion. So, for those of you who are job seekers, looking for a job, hoping for a job, you have to understand that unless you can differentiate yourself from the competition you will be in the job market for a while. Unless you can market yourself as a problem solver for someones organization, rather than a problem – you will continue to be …read more