Lane Cardwell

Where the Ax Fell

We read about them every day. So do our customers. A major company announces a cutback in jobs and it makes the news. It seems to be happening everywhere, in every industry, in every state. Here is a statistical look at the 606,247 job cuts which have been announced between November 1, 2008 and February 8, 2009. Sadly, this only reflects a company cutting 500 or more jobs. As we all know from personal experience there are a lot of smaller businesses that are trimming payrolls or going under and losing all employees. This information was compiled by Bloomberg News and Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive search firm.

The Hotel, Restaurant and Leisure industry ranks 14^th, out of 45 industries which reported job cuts, with 12,100 jobs lost. Again, we all know that this is only the tip of the iceberg since these are announced job cuts. Still, we can give thanks that we are not in the Diversified Financial Services or Capital Markets industries since these two accounted for 24% of all job cuts.

Here is the profile of where the job cuts can be found:

The state data is a little squishy since it only reflects the headquarters state of the company that announced the cuts. For a company like Circuit City the job loss would be spread around the country. 

            

And what does this have to do with the restaurant industry you ask? Our customers need jobs to make use of our services.  A lot of our lunch business comes from people who are working.  Dinner in a restaurant, or takeout, gets trimmed or eliminated when there is no job. Businesses that are cutting back jobs also cut back on travel and entertainment by employees and this affects us. And those office meetings that we are so fond of catering get trimmed also. 

It’s good to stay aware of the business climate so we can plan more realistically. Now if we can only get the media to quit reporting on these cutbacks we will be halfway toward a recovery.

Posted by Lane Cardwell on February 17, 2009 | Comments (1)