U.S. financial services and brokerage companies could lay off another 70,000 workers in an effort to cut costs in the face of a sharp economic downturn and credit constraints, according to a published report. Layoff plans will be finalized this month as companies prepare next year’s budgets, the Financial Times reported. The estimate of 70,000 losses is based on opinions of “executives and analysts,” the paper said. About 150,000 financial services jobs have already been lost worldwide, according to the FT. Investment banks and trading businesses will be the hardest hit, the paper said. Since Labor Day, the U.S. has lost more than a half million jobs and that number is expected to go much higher before it gets better. In October, 240,000 jobs were lost, taking the unemployment rate to 6.5 percent, its highest level since 1994.
what percentage of this 150k + possible 70k= 220k!!! (yikes!) would you guess will be leaving the industry alltogether? In the long run, is this better for those in the investments industry that can weather this storm or is it simply more competition everywhere from here on out?
yes, but i dont hear about job losses for people with ‘real’ jobs. it seems the superflous, redundant jobs are being cleaned up, but not real jobs.
What is a real job? I’m not sure what the difference is between a real job and a fake one in this case.
Examples: real job - accountant superflous job - manager consultant realations, deputy treasurer, executive secretary to the CEO, director marketing, creative director etc
Funny about “real” and “fake” jobs…but so true. There are tons of these redundant jobs in the corporate world…there is already someone doing the required actual real tangible umm WORK that needs to be done, and then there are three people who sit around and take credit for, schedule meetings about, chat about, and analyze the current process of the one person who is working. These fake jobs seem to accumulate when times are good…times not so good now. Good time to be a boring accountant!!!
Amen! I wouldn’t call them ‘fake’ jobs though. I’d call them superfluous.
I don’t think executive assistant is a fake job. The assistant’s job is to take on administrative tasks so that the executive can spend more time doing things that create the most value, as opposed to doing things that are necessare for corporate functioning, but which do not require substantial experience or insight to accomplish. I don’t think marketing is a fake job. If companies don’t sell their products, it doesn’t matter how efficiently you can produce them. It’s true that marketing isn’t the same as sales, but sales can fall on its face if there isn’t someone doing the strategic side of things, which is what marketing is. Consultants are valuable for a lot of reasons, the most valuable of which is that it’s understood that they come, do a task, then leave. They can also be useful when you want to shift blame for unpopular stuff on to a third party or find third party validation/justification for management decisions (admittedly, that is more their political usefulness - how economically useful they are depends on the value of what they are justifying)
So what would you so it is that you actually do? I’m a people person, d@mn it.
I think the size of marketing departments, breadth of education in the field, and the number of students coming out of that field will be the downfall of western society. I took a BBA at a 2nd tier school and the marketing students I bummed around with were some of the dumbest people in the world. I have yet to find one that can be creative or intuitive in any way, out of maybe 3000 students I’ve met/know. If your product is cheap in price and quality, information from a forum or blog can tell you of it. If your product is of high quality and still cheap due to economies of scale, this can also be researched and figured out. If its expensive and of superb quality, that too can be found by talking to people face-to-face or other means. The bottom line is that marketing is a task that helps you decide on a product, whether it is honest or not. If each individual can just go out and do their own research w/o exposure to brain-numbing commercials or slogans, better decisions will be made overall. Any product that exists over an extended period of time will be because of its quality or price point, not how well its marketed, in theory. Think how efficient every business would be should the marketing function be discarded of completely or even cut in half. People need to stop thinking that marketing adds value… it adds nothing but cost for sales that would happen anyway if you were to invest that marketing cash into embettering your product line. It’s sad that we’re too busy to research anything about the products we buy and that we have to rely on the marketing function to make decisions for us. But then again, its sad how our consumer society operates as a whole.
Keep slashing! They are the reason we are in this mess!
mpnoonan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Keep slashing! They are the reason we are in this > mess! +1 
Real jobs or not, I don’t think this is good news for anyone who works or lives in the NY/NJ area. Layoff’s affect business in other areas, real estate prices, and create more competition for those who want to join the workforce (and those seeking different ones).
I don’t doubt that many admin assistants are overpaid relative to the value they add, but that’s not the same as saying that they don’t add value. Economically, their value added is the opportunity cost of having their boss do their work vs doing something else. Practically, that means that an admin’s value is linked to how valuable his or her boss’ time is, as well as how well they do their jobs. In that light, maybe they aren’t so overpaid after all. There are tons of shallow and even dumb folks attracted to marketing, but just because it’s more of a soft skills position and just because a lot of people who pursue it have no technical skills doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Marketing isn’t just about advertising; it’s about understanding customer needs and making sure the products address them. There are lots of crappy marketers out there who just do glorified sales and advertising, but a good marketer is definitely worth paying for.
The debate between the “soft” skill types (marketers, sales, advertising, etc) and the “hard” skills folks (analysts, engineers, etc) has been waged for some time. A quote I heard from – of all people – Supreme Court Justice Antoni Scalia, which he heard from his father when he was a boy that has always stuck out in my head, is “you can always buy brains.” The meaning behind is simple, there are lots of smart people around but what’s most valuable is ideas. Who was more integral in the explosion of the ipod: the engineers who designed it or the marketers who insisted on a sleek look and distinctive white head phones that made you say “hey, I want one of those?”
The marketing department at my firm spends all of its time and effort talking about what color the graphs should be on our reports, and plastering the faces of good looking people all over posters “advertising” a variety of internal announcements and events. They spent a couple years and many thousands of dollars just to make a slight modification to our company logo. These are truly worthless people…