The hits keep coming -- MORE job cuts..MORE unemployment

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Viacom to cut 850 jobs, freeze some raises in 2009

* Thursday December 4, 2008, 9:35 am EST

NEW YORK (AP) -- The media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said Thursday that it will slash about 850 jobs and freeze some senior-level raises in a move to weather the global economic downturn.

The owner of MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures said the job cuts will affect about 7 percent of its work force and hit all departments.

The job cuts and suspension of some raises for senior-level executives in 2009 is expected to generate pretax savings of $200 million to $250 million next year.

The company will take a restructuring charge of $400 million to $450 million before taxes in the fourth quarter.

"The changes we are making in our organization and processes will better position Viacom to navigate the economic slowdown and generate sizable efficiencies that will help us to drive our business as the marketplace stabilizes and conditions improve," President and Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said in a statement.

Viacom said the moves, as well as a writedown of some programming and other assets, will lead to a fourth-quarter charge of 42 cents to 48 cents per share.

The company maintained that it has a "strong balance sheet and substantial cash flow."

Last month Viacom reported that its third-quarter profit fell 37 percent as film studio Paramount Pictures' theatrical revenue fell more than a third and advertising revenue also declined. The company was also hindered by lackluster ratings at MTV.

Viacom shares slipped 16 cents to $15.85 in morning trading after initially rising as high as $16.70.

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NBCU To Cut 500 Jobs, Layoffs Begin at NBC News Bureaus

Breaking: TVNewser has learned NBC Universal will be cutting up to 500 jobs in a round of layoffs which are now underway at all levels of the company — television, film and parks. That amounts to about 3% of the workforce. An insider with knowledge of the situation says the cuts are expected to continue into next week.

The NBC News bureaus in Dallas and Los Angeles (Burbank) are already experiencing cuts, with the insider saying Dallas will experience more layoffs than in Burbank. Among those losing their jobs, NBC News correspondent Don Teague who has been with the network since 2002.

This is all part of an effort to cut $500 million from the NBCU budget announced by company president Jeff Zucker in October.

Last month, TVNewser reported the network was offering buyouts to "virtually everyone." If enough employees did not accept the offer, layoffs were to be the next step.

...Developing...

> Update: Los Angeles correspondents John Larson, who reported for many years for Dateline and Mark Mullen, who just returned to Burbank after a nearly two-year reporting run for NBC in Beijing, are among the cuts. As many as seven people in Burbank have been let go, including Heather Allan who's been with NBC more than 30 years. Allan was the bureau chief for NBC News special events which involved coordinating Olympics coverage for the news division.

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Scripps putting Rocky Mountain News up for sale

DENVER (AP) - E.W. Scripps Co. says it's putting the Rocky Mountain News up for sale after losing $11 million on the Denver operation in the first nine months of the year.

The newspaper announced the development on its Web site Thursday.

Cincinnati-based Scripps has owned the News since 1926. Since 2001, the News has been in a joint operating agreement with The Denver Post, owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc.

Rich Boehne, president and CEO of Scripps, says the company's 50 percent share of the joint operating agreement's cash flow "is no longer enough to support the Rocky, leaving us with no choice but to seek an exit."

The News was founded in 1859 and is Colorado's oldest newspaper. It has won four Pulitzer Prizes since 2000.

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AT&T to cut 12,000 jobs, 4 percent of staff

NEW YORK (AP) - Pressured by the economic turmoil and the mounting loss of traditional phone customers, AT&T Inc. is cutting 12,000 jobs, about 4 percent of its work force.

The Dallas-based telecommunications company, the nation's largest, said the job cuts will begin this month and run throughout 2009. The company also plans to lower its capital spending next year, and one analyst estimates that reduction could be as much as $2 billion.

The 300,000-person company has announced layoffs several times over the past few years, including in April, when it said it would eliminate 4,600 jobs, but it has been hiring at the same time. This is the first time since the company bought BellSouth Corp. in 2006 that it said overall staffing would decline.

The new cuts were part of a parade of layoffs tied to the recession. In addition Thursday, chemicals company DuPont announced plans to lose 2,500 jobs, Credit Suisse Group slashed 5,300 and media conglomerate Viacom Inc. jettisoned 850. Yet AT&T, which provides local phone coverage in California, Texas and 20 other states, is also being pulled by another current: the long-term trend of people defecting from landline phones to wireless services or phone service from the cable company.

In the last quarter, AT&T's basic voice lines in service dropped 11 percent. Its wireless customer base, meanwhile, grew 14 percent.

Reflecting that "changing business mix," the company said it still plans some hiring in 2009 in parts of the business that offer cell phone service and broadband Internet access.

The shift away from landlines has accelerated because of the economic turmoil, said Christopher King, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. Fewer homes bought means fewer landlines getting installed or transferred. And more are getting disconnected as people look to save money and rely only on their cell phones.

AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp said the layoffs will be "across the company and across the country," but would not specify what departments and cities would be most affected.

King expects most of the lost jobs to come from the company's landline business. But he said some might also come from the unit of the company that serves large businesses and accounts for about 30 percent of AT&T's sales. Companies have been cutting back spending because of the recession, and this, King said, will "certainly pinch" AT&T's revenue growth.

AT&T, whose shares are down about 30 percent this year—while the Dow Jones industrial average is off 35 percent—remains profitable, and benefits from being the sole U.S. wireless carrier for Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone. This is in sharp contrast to rival Sprint Nextel Corp., which has been hemorrhaging wireless subscribers and has seen its shares lose 80 percent of their value this year. Last month, Sprint said it is offering voluntary buyout packages to an unspecified number of its 57,000 workers.

Verizon Communications Inc., the nation's second-largest phone company, has fared better than AT&T so far. Its landline business is concentrated in the Northeast, which hasn't been as battered by the housing crisis as some of the markets AT&T serves, like Florida and California. However, Verizon figures to be more affected by a slowdown in business spending and the fallout from the financial sector's crisis.

AT&T plans to take a charge of about $600 million in the fourth quarter to pay for severance costs. The company is still finishing its capital spending plans for next year, and said it will give more specifics on the planned reductions when it posts fourth-quarter earnings in January.

UBS analyst John Hodulik estimates the layoffs will save the company about $720 million, or 8 cents per share, annually. He also expects AT&T's reduction in capital spending to amount to about 10 percent of the $20 billion being spent in 2008.

AT&T noted that many of its non-management employees have guaranteed jobs because of union contracts. All affected workers will receive severance "in accordance with management policies or union agreements," the company said.

AT&T's shares fell 67 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $28.41 in afternoon trading.

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Employers shedding jobs as recession deepens

WASHINGTON (AP) - With the economy sinking faster, employers are giving more Americans dreaded pink slips right before the holidays.

The Labor Department releases a new report Friday that's expected to show the employment market deteriorated in November at an alarming clip as the deepening recession engulfed the country.

After bolting to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October, the unemployment rate likely climbed to 6.8 percent last month, according to economists' forecasts. If they are right, that would mark the worst showing in 15 years.

Skittish employers, which have slashed 1.2 million jobs this year alone, probably axed another 320,000 last month, economists forecast. If that estimate is correct, it would represent the deepest cut to monthly payrolls since October 2001, when the economy was suffering through a recession following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Employers are slashing costs to the bone as they try to cope with sagging appetites from customers in the United States as well as in other countries, which are struggling with their own economic troubles.

The carnage - including the worst financial crisis since the 1930s - is hitting a wide range of companies.

Just in recent days, household names like AT&T Inc., DuPont, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), as well as jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (UTX), and mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX) announced layoffs.

Fighting for their survival, the chiefs of Chrysler LLC, General Motors Corp. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F) will return Friday to Capitol Hill to make a pitch to lawmakers for the second straight day for as much as $34 billion in emergency aid.

Worn-out consumers battered by job losses, shrinking nest eggs and tanking home values have retrenched, throwing the economy into a tailspin. As the unemployment rate continues to move higher, consumers will burrow further, dragging the economy down even more, a vicious circle that Washington policymakers are trying to break.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is expected ratchet down a key interest rate - now near a historic low of 1 percent - by as much as a half-percentage point on Dec. 16 in a bid to breath life into the moribund economy. Bernanke is exploring other economic revival options and wants the government to step up efforts to curb home foreclosures.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the overseer of a $700 billion financial bailout program, is weighing new initiatives, too, even as his remaining days in office are numbered.

President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, has called for a massive economic recovery bill to generate 2.5 million jobs over his first two years in office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has vowed to have a package ready on Inauguration Day for Obama's signature. The measure, which could total $500 billion, would bankroll big public works projects to create jobs, provide aid to states to help with Medicaid costs and provide money toward renewable energy development.

The United States tipped into recession last December, a panel of experts declared earlier this week, confirming what many Americans already thought.

At 12 months and counting, the recession is longer than the 10-month average length of recessions since World War II. The record for the longest recession in the postwar period is 16 months, which was reached in the 1973-75 and 1981-82 downturns. The current recession might end up matching that or setting a record in terms of duration, analysts say.

The 1981-82 recession was the worst in terms of unemployment since the Great Depression. The jobless rate rose as high as 10.8 percent in late 1982, just as the recession ended, before inching down.

Given the current woes, the jobless rate could rise to as high as 8.5 percent by the end of next year, some analysts predict. Projections, however, have to be taken with a grain of salt because all of the uncertainties plaguing the economy. Still, the unemployment rate often peaks after a recession has ended. That's because companies are reluctant to ramp up hiring until they feel certain the recovery has staying power.

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Michigan's unemployment is already past the 9.3% rate that DLS put out for October 2008.

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State Unemployment (Seasonally Adjusted)

In October, Michigan and Rhode Island reported the highest jobless
rates, 9.3 percent each.
Twelve additional states recorded rates of 7.0 percent or more:
California, 8.2 percent;
South Carolina, 8.0 percent;
Nevada, 7.6 percent;
Alaska, 7.4 percent;
Illinois, Ohio, and Oregon, 7.3 percent each;
Mississippi, 7.2 percent;
and Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, 7.0 percent each.
The District of Columbia had a rate of 7.4 percent.

South Dakota and Wyoming recorded the lowest unemployment rates, 3.3 percent each, followed by North Dakota, 3.4 percent; Utah, 3.5 percent; and Nebraska, 3.6 percent.

Overall, 9 states and the District of Columbia registered significantly
higher jobless rates than the U.S. figure of 6.5 percent, 26 states re-
ported measurably lower rates, and 15 states had rates little different
from that of the nation.

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Reuters
U.S. job losses worst since 1974 as downturn deepens
Friday December 5, 10:01 am ET


By Alister Bull

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers axed payrolls by 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years and far more than expected, government data on Friday showed, as the year-old recession hammered every corner of the U.S. economy.

U.S. stock markets opened lower, oil prices and the dollar weakened and U.S. government bond prices rallied as the data showed the U.S. downturn was deepening.

"You can't get much uglier than this. The economy has just collapsed, and has gone into a free fall," said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York.

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent last month, the highest since 1993, from 6.5 percent in October. It would have been even higher except for an exodus of Americans who became discouraged in their search for work and left the labor force.

"This is a clear employment blowout. Firms are reacting as dramatically as they can to make sure they have cost structures they can survive the recession," said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania.

The dismal data sparked calls for aggressive government action to shore up an economy that appears to be facing its deepest downturn since the early 1980s.

"This jobs picture painted today is staggering, and it should be all the evidence Washington needs to act swiftly and decisively to shore up this economy," said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who chairs the congressional Joint Economic Committee.

Broadening economic weakness has already prompted the U.S. Federal Reserve to dramatically lower interest rates to 1 percent and it is expected to trim its benchmark federal funds target toward zero later this month and next, while also exploring other unconventional measures to support growth.

A worldwide credit crisis sparked by mounting defaults on U.S. mortgages has pushed economies around the globe into or toward recession. Canada said earlier on Friday its economy shed 70,600 jobs in November, the most since June 1982.

U.S. job losses in November were the steepest since December 1974, when 602,000 jobs were shed, and were much worse than the consensus on Wall Street for a 340,000 reduction.

In addition, job losses in recent months turned out to be worse than previously reported. October's loss was revised to show a cut of 320,000, originally given as a 240,000 loss, while September's drop was revised to 403,000 from 284,000.

That meant 199,000 more jobs were lost in September and October than previously thought and the total reduction in U.S. nonfarm payrolls for the last three months was 1.256 million, with almost 2 million shed in the year so far.

"It's just a disaster," said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at RBS Greenwich in Greenwich, Conn.

Service-providing businesses alone shed 370,000 jobs in November, or two-thirds of the overall job declines, following a loss of 153,000 jobs the month before.

That meant labor market weakness has now shifted over from the goods-producing sectors of the economy to the far more important services sector, which delivers almost 80 percent of U.S. output.

Employment in manufacturing dropped by 85,000, while construction payrolls shrank by 82,000 jobs. Construction employment has declined for 17 straight months, and factory jobs have declined 29 straight months.

The length of the workweek slipped to 33.5 hours, the shortest since records began in 1964, a Labor Department official said. The drop in the workweek could point to further job losses ahead as business cut back sharply on production.

(Editing by Neil Stempleman)