More Job Cuts Loom Ahead of US Labour Department Payroll Report

by Tina Kells | February 5, 2009 at 12:35 pm

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Job losses in the United States during 2008 reached a 64 year high topping 2.6 million, with the majority of those losses coming at the end of the year. The job losses in 2009 are not fairing much better leading analysts to speculate that the number of layoffs this year will be even higher.

In January the number of Americans filing first time jobless claims reached a 26 year high. In the final week of January alone there were 626,000 claims made and worker hours were reduced to their lowest levels since 1975.

The US Labour Department will be announcing its payroll report for January on February 6, 2009 and industry analysts are warning people to brace for some staggering figures.

The Labor Department’s payroll report, due tomorrow, is projected to show the economy lost an additional 540,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate jumped to a 16-year high of 7.5 percent, according to the median forecast. The U.S. lost almost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since 1945.

The surge in firings and reduction in hours has forced those employees still working to become more efficient. For all of 2008, productivity climbed 2.8 percent, the biggest gain in four years.

“The increase in productivity is not necessarily good news,” said Dana Saporta, an economist in New York with Dresdner Kleinwort, which forecast efficiency would rise 3 percent last quarter. “Workers who are left with jobs are working harder.”