Tech Layoffs Crash Hard into Indian Workers I DW News

Nov 17, 2022 | Online-retailer Amazon has confirmed a coming round of mass layoffs, making it the latest tech-giant to slash jobs amid slowing global-growth. On Tuesday the company filed notice to California regulators that it would scrap jobs in that state. It is expected to shed as many as 10-thousand positions in the coming days, following similar measures by tech giants Meta and Twitter. Amazon employs 1.5 million workers around the world.

One country in which this wave of job cuts is particularly crashing into is India. Twitter cut off half its work force there, and education technology firms Byju and Unacademy laid off hundreds of workers. Workers in India are also among those affected by "Meta" cuts. Ironically, many of them are using those same platforms, including social media, to air their grievances and protests against the unceremonious firings.

US Lost 140,000 Jobs in December, the First Decline Since April

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The already sputtering economic rebound went into reverse in December, as employers laid off workers amid rising coronavirus cases and waning government aid.

U.S. employers cut 140,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first net decline in payrolls since last spring’s mass layoffs, and though the December loss was nowhere near that scale, it represented a discouraging reversal for the once-promising recovery. The U.S. economy still has about 10 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic began.

The December losses were heavily concentrated in leisure and hospitality businesses, which have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. The industry cut nearly half a million jobs in December, while sectors less exposed to the pandemic continued to add workers. » | Ben Casselman | Friday, January 8, 2021

Ranks of the long-term jobless are bigger than the numbers show »

New Claims for State Unemployment Benefits Remained High Last Week

THE NEW YORK TIMES: More than four months after Americans began emerging from the coronavirus-caused lockdown across most states, the job market remains treacherous, according to new data from the Labor Department.

More than 857,000 workers filed new claims for state unemployment insurance last week, before seasonal adjustments, a slight increase from the previous week. Although the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.4 percent, the level of layoffs reflects the challenges for many workers in the fitful recovery.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the total was 884,000, unchanged from the revised figure for the previous week.

In addition, about 839,000 new claims were filed under a federal program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which provides assistance to freelancers, part-time workers and others who do not ordinarily qualify for state benefits. That figure, which is not seasonally adjusted, represented a rise from 748,000 the previous week.

“Permanent job losses are mounting,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics. “There are a large number of people who are being sidelined and could fall out of the labor force.” » | Thursday, September 10, 2020

McDonald's, Capitalism, and Unemployment

Professor Wolff explains the implications of McDonald's firing thousands of employees and replacing them with kiosks.

No Job Land: A Bleak Reminder of Spain's Unemployment Crisis

No Job Land video a poignant reminder of the economic difficulties many families are suffering in Spain

Read the article and comment here | Fiona Govan | Friday, December 20, 2013

Pope Attacks Global Economics for Worshipping 'God of Money'

REUTERS.COM: Pope Francis made one of his strongest attacks on the global economic system on Sunday, saying it could no longer be based on a "god called money" and urged the unemployed to fight for work.

Francis, at the start of a day-long trip to the Sardinian capital, Cagliari, put aside his prepared text at a meeting with unemployed workers, including miners in hard hats who told him of their situation, and improvised for nearly 20 minutes.

"I find suffering here ... It weakens you and robs you of hope," he said. "Excuse me if I use strong words, but where there is no work there is no dignity."

He discarded his prepared speech after listening to Francesco Mattana, a 45-year-old married father of three who lost his job with an alternative energy company four years ago.

Mattana, his voice trembling, told the pope that unemployment "oppresses you and wears you out to the depths of your soul".

The crowd of about 20,000 people in a square near the city port chanted what Francis called a prayer for "work, work, work". They cheered each time he spoke of the rights of workers and the personal devastation caused by joblessness.

The pope, who later celebrated Mass for some 300,000 people outside the city's cathedral, told them: "We don't want this globalised economic system which does us so much harm. Men and women have to be at the centre (of an economic system) as God wants, not money."

"The world has become an idolator of this god called money," he said.

Sardinia's coast is famous for its idyllic beaches, exclusive resorts and seaside palatial residences of some of the world's richest people, including former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and a host of Hollywood actors.

But much of the island, particularly its large cities and the vast agricultural and industrial interior, has been blighted by the economic crisis, with factories closed and mines operating at low capacity. » | Philip Pullella | Cagliari, Sardinia | Edited by Will Waterman | Sunday, September 22, 2013

Emergency Exit: Greeks Flee Country as Government Resorts to Mass Layoffs

Greece entered the world financial crisis in 2008 with less than 10 percent of the country's labor force out of work. Today, more than a quarter of the population is left without jobs and with no apparent chance of getting one. The latest figures from the finance ministry show another 23 percent doesn't earn enough to stay above the poverty line. And, as RT's Egor Piskunov reports, Greeks are now looking elsewhere for their future.

Unemployment in Greece Rises to 27%
Finance minister says economic recovery to begin next year as the government says its focus is on jobs.

On the Run: No Jobs, Slave Wages Drive Portuguese Abroad
Portugal's unemployment level has hit a painful 18 per cent, with close to half of young people now out of work. And while the figure threatens to grow even further, scores of people are jumping ship for jobs and a decent living outside a home country battered by debt. RT's Peter Oliver has met some of them.

Spain's Unemployment Rate Jumps to 27 Percent
Number of jobless people climbs to record 6.2 million in eurozone's fourth biggest economy amid double dip recession.

Tranche Trance: Greece Struggles to Satisfy Lenders, Youth Flees Country
After the drama of Cyprus, the lending troika is sceptical about the merger between Greece's two biggest banks. The country insists it can handle recapitalisation, and the Finance Minister has assured Greeks their deposits are safe. He also promised there'll be no tougher austerity, but lenders are pressing for severe job cuts in the bloated public sector. They want a massive 25-thousand workers laid off this year, and a total of 150-thousand by 2016. Soaring unemployment has already been driving young Greeks away from their country, as Tom Barton reports. (April 2013)

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Greece enters deflation for first time in 45 years: Greek consumer prices fell year-on-year in March, taking the battered economy into deflationary territory for the first time since 1968. » | Denise Roland | Tuesday, April 09, 2013

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Southern Europe's brain drain over the Alps to Germany: Italians, Spaniards and Greeks are forsaking their homelands and heading over the Alps to the more robust economies of Germany and Switzerland, as economies contract across the Mediterranean. » | Nick Squires, Rome, Fiona Govan in Madrid and Jeevan Vasagar in Berlin | Sunday, April 14, 2013

Debt-stricken Spain Hit by Record Joblessness
New statistics show unemployment rate now above 25 per cent, with about 800,000 people losing jobs in past 12 months.

Spain Jobs Woes Deepen as Unemployment Rate Hits 25pc
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Spain’s unemployment rate reached 25pc, official data showed of Friday, the highest level since the nation’s transition to democracy, with further layoffs predicted next year.

Tens of thousands of jobs were lost between July and September raising the number of unemployed to 5.78 million people, Spain’s National Statistics Institute reported, a level unseen since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco ended in the mid-1970s.

The number of Spanish households in which every member is out of work climbed to 1.74 million, roughly one tenth of all Spanish families.

The rise in the number of jobless comes as Spain sinks deeper into recession, with output expected to decline for the third consecutive quarter.

It comes as Spain struggles with deep austerity measures that have forced many out onto the street in protest.

Unions have called a general strike for November 14, the second since Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government came to power in December. » | Fiona Govan, in Madrid | Friday, October 26, 2012

Insight: Young Jobless on the Rise in Europe's Rich North
REUTERS.COM: At 29, Samira Ahidar just got a permanent job, her first.

Ahidar, who still lives with her parents, dropped out of school a decade ago and her adult life has been dominated by the search for work. She would still be jobless if it were not for a job creation scheme that employs her at an elderly care home.

"I've no idea where I'll be in five years time," said Ahidar, dressed in an orange apron that comes with her new role. "It is so hard to find work, you feel like giving up."

Ahidar does not live in Greece or Spain, countries where as many as one in two young people are without work, but in the wealthy Belgian port city of Antwerp. With its stunning 16th-century Gothic houses, the city is a world centre for diamond trading and boasts a cutting-edge fashion industry. It also has a fast-growing number of unemployed twentysomethings.

Youth unemployment is notoriously a problem of southern Europe. What is less obvious, as the euro zone slips into its second recession in just three years, is the scale of the problem in the north. » | Robin Emmott and Robert-Jan Bartunek | ANTWERP, Belgium | Friday, September 21, 2012

The Pain in Spain: Recession and the Middle Class
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Unemployment, debt and the collapse of industry have brought Spain to its knees – even the middle classes are now queuing at the food banks

Spain, the fourth-largest economy in the Eurozone, is treading water. Europe is poised to approve a loan of up to €100 billion to save its stricken banking sector, and with Spain's borrowing costs remaining dangerously high, fears are growing that it could follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in a full-scale bailout. The prospects for growth are low as Spaniards steel themselves for the effects of €27 billion worth of cuts this year as the country struggles to bring its budget deficit down from 8.9 per cent of GDP in 2011 to under three per cent by 2014.

Spain is forecast to be the only country among the 17 nations of the Eurozone to remain in recession in 2013. Unemployment, already at 24.3 per cent, is expected to worsen. Half of all Spaniards aged between 18 and 25 are out of work – youth unemployment in Spain now exceeds 50 per cent, matching that of Greece. Blocked out of a labour market that favours older employees on permanent contracts who are expensive to fire, youth workers in Spain have suffered the brunt of the economic crisis. Once, many unskilled youths found work in the construction sector, but with growth crippled and Spain sliding into its second recession within three years the competition for jobs is high.

Where their parents looked to a bright future, as Spain developed from a fledgling democracy on the death of the Fascist dictator Francisco Franco to one of the success stories of the European Union, today's youth have little to do with their time but join marches and sit-ins against the austerity cuts, the political system and rising unemployment.

In Tres Cantos, a dormitory town 20 miles north of Madrid, the heat of the day was barely diminished at 7pm. An elderly couple shuffled beneath a pergola draped in wisteria, seeking out what little shade there was. Restaurant terraces were empty, their tables laid optimistically for an evening rush. The one hive of activity was outside a collection of white portable buildings on scrubland behind metal fencing in the heart of the town centre. Here, a queue of people snaked out of the gates. Their heads down, they pulled shopping trolleys and clutched bags marked with the names of leading supermarkets, but this was not a supermarket. It was a Red Cross centre. Read on and comment » | Fiona Govan | Saturday, July 21, 2012

Spain's Unemployed See No End in Sight
With one in four people unemployed in Spain, a single unemployment office serving only one district in Madrid can see up to 700 people per day. The economy remains in recession and there have been severe cutbacks in public spending. Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull, reporting from Madrid, meets one father of two children, whose struggle to find work has become all too familiar to the Spanish public.

More Than Four Million Spaniards Out Of Work
More than half of Spain's youth under 25-years-old are unemployed and almost five million of the country's citizens are now on unemployment benefits. But, while private depositors and investors have withdrawn more $100bn from Spanish banks in the last two months, the government insists that it is not on the verge of insolvency and does not need an international bailout. Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull reports from Madrid.

Unemployment in France Highest in 12 Years
The jobless rate is the first big challenge for new President Francois Hollande who vowed to tackle unemployment during his election campaign. Al Jazeera's Tim Friend reports from Paris.

Is Europe's Weakness Finally Reaching Germany?
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: The news out of Nuremberg, Germany, today that the number of unemployed Germans unexpectedly rose in April could have big implications for the rest of Europe.

Exhibit No. 1 for Germany’s pro-austerity case is the strength of the German economy. “See,” the Germans’ message goes, “we are keeping our belts tight and our economy is still strong. Follow our example.” If Germany weakens, it would have two conflicting effects—hurting the rest of Europe by decreasing Germany’s demand for their products, but possibly helping the rest of Europe by making Germany more sympathetic to the need for stimulus to restore growth.

In truth, Germany hasn’t even embraced the austerity it urges on other countries, because it hasn’t had to, says Steven Kyle, an economist at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management. Economic growth has produced enough tax revenue that spending cuts have not been needed to keep the federal budget in rough balance.

“What will be interesting now will be to see if they will take the medicine they’ve been urging everyone else to take and cut their own spending,” says Kyle. “If they do, they will get a contraction.” » | Peter Coy | Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Unemployment in the Age of Austerity
An estimated 196 million people were unemployed at the end of 2011, but are austerity measures partly to blame?