Layoffs being to take hold as traffic continues to decline in poor economy.
From BLET site today:
OMAHA, Neb. — About 1,500 of Union Pacific’s 21,000 engineers and conductors have been laid off or are working under reduced hours due to the nation’s struggling economy.
http://www.ble.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=24311
LC
The auto industry thread got off-track and locked, but this is really where it was headed.
just the tip of the iceberg… after the holiday seasons i see traffic getting even worse and deeper layoffs ahead… hope im wrong…
csx engineer
As the ecomony slips deeper into Recession, there will be less traffic on the rails AND highways and layoffs in all transportation sectors will follow.
Sadly, I’m afraid you will not be proved wrong. Christmas will not be merry for millions worldwide.
Dennis
For us the Christmas rush ended before Halloween , we seem to be getting slower evry day . No layoffs yet but we see it coming . I think there will be a rebound by the end of the 2nd quarter .
The horrible state of the economy is affecting a lot of people, lets hope things get back to normal, whatever that may be, sooner than later. I have a friend that was laid off, and two weeks later his fiancee lost her job. You can’t make stuff like this up. When a large company like UP is even cutting back it really gets scary.
Judging by what I saw this weekend while shopping, in stores like Nike and other companies whose products come from the far east, container traffic may not be as bad as one may think. These stores were full, and people were were buying almost two weeks before black friday. If things go too badly I am sure Uncle Sam has some more bailout money.
Uncle Sam doesn’t have a dime.
While I believe we are truly in a Recession…with the volatility of the markets (commodity, stock and everything else) to both rise and fall in amounts during trading session, that years ago would have equaled the entirety of the worlds economy. I am left wondering how much of the volatility is true market movement and how much is panicy speculators that are trying to play both ends against the middle and obscuring the real fundamentals of the markets activities. The market volatilities near the end of the trading days are truly earth shattering.
I believe there is something more at play than supply/demand equations in the price changes we have seen on virtually everything we come in contact with. I just wish I could pin point an identify what that ‘something’ is.
I course Uncle Sam has more money. They just borow more from other countries and increase our national debt ever more. I think we are over Trillion… [banghead]
I read that the recession started in April and is forecast for a 14 month run. So look forward to June. Of course, they could be wrong.
I think one thing that is being overlooked is the shot in the arm comming from reduced energy prices. I know I paid over $4.00/gallon - but it didn’t stay there long. If we use $3.25/gallon from a year ago and look at $2.00/gallon now, it’s going to be a tremendous benifit to everyone.
If a family uses 20 gallons/week they will save $25.00/week at $2.00/gallon. That may not seem like much, but it will add up to $1,300/year. And that is pure cash in their pockets. They’ll do three things with it. 1) Spend some, 2) pay down the credit cards, 3) save some. #1 will perk up the economy, as will #2 and #3. #2 & #3 will give banks more money to lend - which will have the same effect as #1. That’s more stimulous than the government ever dreamed of.
And the energy price stimulous will go to everyone. It’s not some of this “Let’s take it away from him so we can give it to you” crap. Families will benifit and businesses will too. I don’t think this will be as bad as a lot of folks think it will be. Of course, I could be wrong.
The new administration and congress could screw things up by doing things like raising the capital gains tax. And I think the fear of such things is aggrevating our situation. By June it should be clear what they’re going to do. If they don’t screw it up I think we’ll be OK.
Recessions are like people getting sick. It’s going to happen. Not pleasant - but it’s going to happen. If you’ve kept yourself in decent shape and get the right treatment you’ll live through it.
Yes, I sense that we are real strange territory with a unique convergence of several factors. This is what I think that “something” is.
If I am not mistaken, we don’t even yet know if we are technically in a recession. There is a slowing underway, and we may be about to enter negative growth, but we might not.
In my opinion, there has been an unprecedented news media promotion of a bad economy for almost a year now.
Bingo. Your “unprecedented news media promotion” attempting to convince Americans that we’re in desperate financial straits was part of a not-so-hidden political agenda that ended Nov. 4.
Now that that agenda has been successfully realized, it is difficult for the media to back off its relentless assertions of an imminent R or a D even though manufacturing was up in October with a 1.3 percent gain – as opposed to the expected 0.2 gain.
Enough Americans have been panicked by these gloom and doom media reports into stopping their spending – which has started the downhill snowball of layoffs as goods remain on store shelves. Now we wait to see what happends next.
Yes, if you ask the average person, they believe we are in the worst depression ever, and yet we are not even in a recession. “Never mind the technicalities” the media persists, “If it feels like a recession, it is one.” How convenient for the o
There are a couple of “somethings” out there.
First the bubble created by the housing buildup, based on historically easy credit. Second is the over leveraging of just about everything in our economy from households to government.
The volitility in the markets is due to several things, including the unwinding of leverage by the hedge funds (up to 30x1 leverage) as they unwind their holdings. There just simply are not many buyers of equities out there at this time. However, there does seem to be a level of support around the DOW8100 level. If we fall thru that…we might really see a free fall.
BTW, regardless of what the evening news says, the economy is in a pretty bad state right now. My current sales career has spanned 18 years with the same company, this is by far (BY FAR) the worst I have seen.
BY FAR.
ed
Not all bad news…I own a business and yes things have slowed up; however, I’m looking at this slow time as a way to regroup and to actually add capacity. When times are good it is very hard to find good people…especially if you’re a small business. I’m working hard at improving sales levels and adding new business now so that I can hire some good people for the longhaul.
It is almost counterintuitive…but the slow times are often the best times to grow a business.
No doubt that the upcoming end of yr board cuts will go quite deep this winter compared to what they have been for the past several yrs. The issue w/ the auto industry will have a huge impact on what lies ahead for us. Hope I’m also wrong, but I see very rough times ahead for our country. This is not going to be a quick short term fix by any means.
if the auto industry is as bad off as they makers are trying to say they are… god help us all…
csx engineer
Guys, I don’t mean to sound bleak, but when this whole thing got really hot, with the stock market in free-fall, I got out my American History Book to look up the crisis of 1929. Well, what I read just gave me goosebumps; it all sounded so eerily familiar, almost like reading the daily newspaper. Here are a few excerpts:
“Despite the well-publicized prosperity of the 1920s…the nation’s wealth remained concentrated in the hands of very few people: even with installment buying, most consumers had reached the limit of their purchasing power…the savings rate was abysmally low. The families of workers who lost their jobs…could plunge instantly from the middle class to poverty-with no money left to pay for automobiles, radio sets, or anything else…”
“Of course, there was a great deal of reckless stock speculation as well during the 1920s, as millions of ordinary Americans joined the nation’s wealthiest citizens in playing the market…Optimism regarding the future of the economy reained nearly universal as late as the fall of 1929…The [stock] market’s high point was reached on September 3; then the slide began, at first slowly but picking up speed in late October…The deep plunge began on Thrusday, October 24, 1929…Leaders ibn Washington and on Wall Street responded with public statements designed to reassure…Then came Black Tuesday. . .[E]fforts…to prop up stock prices…had little effect. Over the next several months, personal bankruptcies mounted, dramatically reducing consumer spending; without customers, businesses began to fail. Business failure, of course, meant higher unemployment and even less consumer spending, which meant even more business failures. The cycle kept going for years, as the situation grew ever more desperate. The stock market, in fact, didn’t hit bottom until July 8, 1932…down 89 percent from its September 3, 1929 high…”
"[T]he country was in the depths of it