Today was a day of non-events. The Producer Price Index seemed to be ignored (YoY change was negative, outside expectations — maybe we’ll hear more about this tomorrow with the Fed announcement). There was a somewhat upbeat housing report (click for Calculated Risk’s analysis). The US National Debt hit $11 trillion. There was some more fuss about AIG. Market reports are crediting the housing report with moving the markets up today. Plausible; It certainly didn’t do a lot to change sentiment. The jobs front had two important items. The headlines:
Nokia to lay off 1,700 worldwide — These cuts will hit Finland, the US, and the UK, and will impact multiple sectors.
Caterpillar lays off 2,454 workers in 3 states — A little over 2,000 of these are new. This is round 3. There doesn’t appear to be any reason not to expect round 4.
China Lost 25 Million Jobs on Financial Crisis, Center Says — Bonus headline. No details, but that’s a big number.
The Nokia layoffs are one of the first big non-manufacturing job cuts in tech that we’ve seen in a while, even if it wasn’t focused on the US. I wonder if we’ll see a second wave of big tech layoffs.
