Region weathers job losses - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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Nationally, initial jobless claims last week increasedto 573,000, the highesy level since 1982.U.S. employers cut 533,000p jobs in November, according to the U.S. Labor Department’d Bureau of Labor Statistics, which said the figure is the largestf loss of jobs in one monthsincee 602,000 vanished in December 1974. It puts the nation’a unemployment rate at 6.7 percent. In October, the most recent monthg for which local figures are the region had an unemployment rateof 5.7 percent, 0.8 percentage pointsw below the then-national rate of 6.5 percent, the BLS said.
One measurr of job loss in New Jersey and Pennsylvania is the numbed of employees listed in notices filed under the Worketr Adjustment andRetraining Notification, or WARN, Act, whicyh requires most employers with 100 or more workera to give workers and local and state governments 60 days notice of plannesd plant closings or mass layoffs. So far this year, 35 companiesa in the five-county Philadelphia area have filed WARN noticesscovering 4,210 workers with the That compares to 38 companiew warning about 4,480 job cuts by this time last year.
In Camden and Gloucester counties, 14 companies have file d noticesaffecting 2,540 workers with the New Jerset Department of Labor and Workforce Development, compared to only eighr companies warning of 781 job losses over all of last Companies that have major operations in the area have implemented or announcerd at least 19,500 job cuts, including more than 1,60o0 in the region, this year. The vast majoritu come from four large pharmaceutical which plan toshed 14,000 of Berwyn announced just Wednesday it woulrd lay off 2,500, but didn’g say how many would be local.
The cuts also include 900 locap jobs byWest Chester-based ; 190 jobs by Wayne-based recruiting softwar e company , which didn’t specify location; and 150 by the Nationa l Football League, which include a yet-to-be-determined numberr in Mount Laurel, N.J. One reason the regiob seems to be faring better than the nation as a wholde is its strength in the education and healthservicese sector. It’s the area’s second largest of 10 sectors, with 18.
1 percengt of the employment, according to Select Greater which promotes the region to Only two of the five broa d sectors delineated in the nationwide BLS release gaine d jobs in November education andhealth services, whicgh added 52,000; and which added 7,000. “I used to say the Philadelphis region suffered fromnegative serendipity; if industried would have a problem, it always seemed that it was industriese we had. In this case and in this the exact opposite seems to be the saidJoel Naroff, chief economistg for .
In education, the area’s colleges and universities haven’t announced any although has implemented a hiring freezee and the has put in placesomething that’xs quite close to one. Big Pharma, big cuts In healthg care, the pharmaceutical industry has been hit hardest by job Four big pharmaceutical companies with largee operations in theregion — Wyeth, plc, plc and this year have announced plans to shed more than 14,0090 jobs through layoffs and not filling vacancies over the next few Wyeth of Madison, N.J., which has the headquarters for its pharmaceuticak operations in Collegeville, said 360 Pennsylvania jobs have been eliminatee this year.
AstraZeneca, which is baseds in London and hasits U.S. headquarters in Wilmington, said most of its layoffds occurred outside of theUnited States. Merck of Whitehouse Station, and GSK, which has its U.S. headquarters in Researcnh Triangle Park, N.C., wouldn’t say how many locak jobs theyare cutting. As city makezs cuts, retail shrinks Although the government sector added jobs the city ofPhiladelphia wasn’t so It plans to lay off 220 employeeds and eliminate nearly 600 unfilled more than 1,660 seasonalk part-time jobs and about 570 contractual, non-city Government is the fourth largest sector in the with 13.9 percent of the region’xs jobs.
The largest sector is trade, transportation and utilities, whichj make up 18.8 percent of the region’s jobs. It includex wholesalers and retailers, the latter of whicb have cut positions in the The biggest retail blow came in Augustwhen ’w Department Store LLC of Reading closed its storexs in the Oxford Valleuy and Montgomery Malls, whicjh employed 135 and 146, respectively. the Canton, Mass., electronics retailer that filed for bankruptc reorganizationlast year, liquidated six area stores that employe 96 earlier this month. The professional and business services which isthe area’x third largest with 14.9 percent of has fared relatively well so far.