How to find companies that are laying off

Posted by Jim Stroud

April 3, 2008

Someone rebounded a question to me after hearing one of the podcasts Karen and I do. It was a simple (and I thought) obvious question, “In terms of the economy, how are we doing?” My initial thought, not so good. But hey, why not do a little research to verify the obvious? So I pop over to Google News and do a search on how many news stories there were online describing layoffs and job cuts.

These are the search strings I used:

job cuts layoffs location:usa

intitle:jobs (downsizing OR reduction-in-force OR layoffs) location:usa

intitle:jobs hiring.freeze location:usa

Between those searches, I found a combined number of 1,650 stories. These are some of the stories I thought were especially interesting.

Banking - Analysts see 200,000 banking industry layoffs (More)

Google DoubleClick cuts 300 jobs, nearly a quarter of the advertising company’s workforce, and plans to sell Performics, a marketing unit, later in the year. (More)

Dell Inc. said it plans further layoffs as part of its plan to cut costs by $3 billion over the next 3 years. (More)

NASA says even more jobs may be cut in the near future, and the announcement has state politicians up in arms. (More)

1% of CBS News Staff Cut in Round of Layoffs (More)

So then I thought, finding all of these news stories is not the most scientific route as many of them will be reporting on the same companies. It would be better if I leveraged a searchengine that kept tabs on this kind of thing and measure the results over time. I did not know of any layoff searchengines that were out there off the top of my head, so I did a scan of the web and discovered a gem - HR Live.

HR Live is a really easy to use searchengine that lets you find companies laying off based on size, industry, keywords and more. (Me likee!)

So what I ended up telling the person was that the economy was not that great based on all of the layoffs that have happened and the layoffs that are pending (as reported by some of the news stories I found earlier). And then, the ADP Employment Report was published with a (somewhat) contrary view. Go figure. Well… I guess I can’t really say contrary, just a bit more even handed in its outlook citing both the good and bad of how things are. (I sent that person a link where they can download the report for themselves.)

For those who don’t know, “The ADP National Employment Report” is a measure of nonfarm private employment, based on a subset of aggregated and anonymous payroll data that represents approximately 392,000 of ADP’s 500,000 U.S. business clients and roughly 24 million employees working in all 19 of the major North American Industrial Classification (NAICS) private industrial sectors. Their reports are kind of a big deal, well, check out what their latest findings show them (as of today).

The ADP National Employment Report
Wednesday, April 2, 2008, 8:15 A.M. ET

Nonfarm private employment increased 8,000 from February to March 2008 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report™. The estimated change in employment from January to February was revised up 5,000 to negative 18,000. Though positive, the slight increase of 8,000 in March signals a continuing sharp deceleration of employment growth from previous levels. Unlike the weakness of employment reported in February, which was widespread across businesses of all sizes and apparent in all major sectors of the economy, the weakness of employment in March was concentrated among larger businesses in the goods-producing sector.

Employment in the service-providing sector of the economy grew 85,000, while employment in the goods-producing sector declined 77,000, the sixteenth consecutive monthly decline. Manufacturing employment fell 58,000 in March and marked the nineteenth consecutive monthly decline.

Large businesses, defined as those with 500 or more workers, saw employment decline 52,000. Conversely, employment among small-size businesses, defined as those with fewer than 50 workers, advanced 55,000 during the month, up from a revised 16,000 in February. Employment increased just 5,000 among medium-size businesses with between 50 and 499 workers.

Two sectors of the economy hit hardest by recent problems in mortgage markets have been residential construction and financial activities related to home sales and mortgage lending. In March, construction employment fell 22,000. This is the sixteenth consecutive monthly decline, bringing the total decline in construction jobs since the peak in August 2006 to 259,000. Employment in financial activities for the month was flat.

For information on the construction and use of the ADP Report, please visit the methodology section of the ADP National Employment Report website at http://ADPemploymentreport.com/methodology.aspx.

Come to think of it, you might want to download the report as well.

E’ you later!

-Jim Stroud