Friday October 23, 2015

// October 22nd, 2015 // Daily News

Layoffs don’t necessarily spell trouble: Challenger

CNBC.com

People fill out a form for job opportunities during the Miami Worldcenter construction job fair.
For nearly two months, a slew of big American and foreign companies have been announcing major layoffs, clouding the outlook for the employment picture.
It began in September Hewlett-Packard announced that its spinoff could mean up to 30,000 job cuts. This week alone, layoffs were announced at 3M, Biogen, Credit Suisse, Disney’s ESPN and Perrigo.
According to a report by outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, September saw a 43 percent increase from the previous month in terms of job cuts. And cuts were 93 percent higher than the 30,477 planned layoffs announced the same month a year ago.
“You don’t want to overexaggerate, but there’s no question that layoffs are heavier this year,” said CEO John Challenger. “It suggests more pressure on companies that aren’t performing as well to take action now.”
Job seekers wait in line to meet with potential employers during a HireLive job fair in St. Louis, Missouri.
More than half of US reports job losses last month
A UPS worker checks an Amazon box to be delivered in New York.
About those blockbuster jobs reports: They’re over
The third quarter of 2015 was the worst in terms of job cuts since the third quarter of 2009, the report found. So far this year, there have been more layoffs announced than in the full year of 2014.
Increased mergers and acquisitions activity has also led to consolidation and sometimes widespread job cuts. Challenger also points to an economy in the late stages of a recovery cycle. “We may be in the seventh inning of the expansion cycle and some companies simply can’t make it.”
The higher number of layoffs seems, at the surface, odd as weekly jobless claims fall to historic lows.
In fact, the four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it strips out week-to-week volatility, slipped 2,000 to 263,250 last week, the lowest level since December 1973.
Challenger said that even though more people are being laid off, they are wading in the unemployment pool for shorter periods.
“It means that people are getting picked up quickly,” he said. “Even with the heavier layoffs more people in a tight labor market can make quicker transitions.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average duration of unemployment was 26.3 weeks in September, compared with 31.8 weeks for the same period in 2014.

Today’s Inspiration

Pray

by Joyce Meyer – posted October 22, 2015

Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God.
– Philippians 4:6

Far too many times we treat prayer as a last-ditch effort. The reasons vary—we try to fix a problem on our own, we assume God is too busy with other things, or we feel God is mad at us and won’t listen to our prayers. But when we fail to pray the result is the same: We carry burdens we do not need to bear.

For many believers, life is much harder than it has to be because we do not realize how powerful prayer is. If we did, we would pray about everything, not as a last resort, but as a first response.

In James 5:13, the apostle James offers a simple, three-word solution to some of life’s challenges: “He should pray.” The message to us in this verse is that no matter what happens over the course of a day, we can go to God in prayer. There is a great benefit in this decision—the more you pray, the closer to God you will be.

Anytime you have a problem, make prayer your first response. If you have a need, don’t hesitate to tell God what it is. When you are discouraged or feel like giving up, let God be the first person you talk to about how you are feeling. He loves you, and when you go to Him in prayer, you will be amazed at what a difference it will make in your life.

Whatever situation you find yourself in, make prayer your first response not your last resort.

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