"Retail Losses Sap Jobs Safety Net".......

[KoKo]

Retail Losses Sap a Jobs Safety Net
by Jeffrey McCracken, Vanessa O'Connell and Ray A. Smith
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

ircuit City Stores Inc.'s bankruptcy-court filing Monday underscores how this economic downturn may differ from others in recent memory: The U.S. retail sector is losing its place as the employer of last resort for the newly unemployed.

Circuit City, the country's second-largest electronics chain, had already announced it would cut 6,800 people as it conducts going-out-of-business sales at one-fifth of its outlets. On Monday, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and said that the number of job losses was likely to rise to 8,000.


Circuit City is the latest of at least 14 major retail chains, including Linens 'n Things and Mervyn's LLC, to file for bankruptcy protection in the past 12 months. Many, such as Linens, are discovering that they can't find financing and are liquidating, slashing tens of thousands of jobs. Fashion retailer Steve & Barry's entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings this summer with a plan to trim about 100 of its 276 stores; now, according to people familiar with the matter, the company is likely to liquidate the entire chain.

Roughly one of every 10 Americans is employed in the retail sector. But since November 2007, about a fourth of all jobs that have been lost -- about 320,000 in all -- have been in retail.

That has helped push the country's overall unemployment rate to 6.5% through October, a figure many economists expect to grow to 8% or higher. The unemployment figures don't include about 209,000 retail workers whose full-time hours have been reduced to part-time, according to the Department of Labor.

Retail employment has traditionally been relatively resilient in times of recession, with its job cuts often lagging behind those in other segments. The pace of layoffs and store closures was slower in the 2001 downturn than it is currently, because consumers in the earlier slowdown had continued to spend.

This time around, the sector's job losses have outstripped those of other troubled industries such as automotive manufacturing, financial services and hospitality, according to the latest government jobs data.

Retail experts believe many of the sector's biggest cuts are yet to come.

-snip-

"In retail, you have large numbers of people who are at or slightly above poverty, so losing employment in that sector can increase poverty levels," said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the University of California at Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. "As manufacturing declined, these were the jobs where people could go."

Lauren Kerr, a 48-year-old single mother in Oakland, Calif., last month lost her job as senior creative manager in the marketing department at Mervyn's, a California department store that announced its liquidation last month. She has since found contract employment in a job that doesn't pay benefits.

"I'm a single parent. I don't have much of a savings cushion," Ms. Kerr said in an interview. She said she shops less for pricey organic and natural foods, and cooks at home more. She said her 10-year-old daughter Joana has also been more thrifty. "She will say, 'Well, we can't spend any money right now,' or, 'Mommy, I don't need my allowance,'" Ms. Kerr said.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/106139/Retail-Losses-Sap-a-Jobs-Safety-Net

[jwirr]

1. For years the rw has worked to convince us that the FDR programs

were not working and should go because they only helped the poor. One big thing we are learning right now is that the FDR safety net was not just for the poor. Regulating the banks and finance was for their own good and the good of the nation. Those who deregulated so many areas of our lives have brought us to the point where we are so broke that we can no longer participate in the market they are so bent on freeing. What is the old song "Freedom is Just Another Work for Nothing Left to Lose".

[KoKo]

2. "For our own good." Amazing how that got lost all these years and became

something the Limbaugh/Faux Crowd thought was a "bad thing" even though they love to spout the "Christian Ideals," to their RW base who think "Chrystal Palaces" and "Evangelical Superstars" are what Christ was really preaching all those years ago according to the New Testament scholars.

[jwirr]

3. I know - I have often wondered what came first - their misinterpretation

of scripture or their disbelief in government. The two are connected but which is the instigator of their weird philosophy?

[KoKo]

4. I've concluded it was all about "Making Money" by being Superstars for

RW and Churches...but then...who knows...:eyes: