Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks, which has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.
Even though we’re going to see unemployment continue at the highest level since 1983, there are some promising trends. November payrolls are expected to fall by 120,000, which would be the fewest since January 2008 (or, as we at Law Shucks call it, "when Cadwalader started the law-firm layoff trend in earnest" — that’s when we started keeping track). Unfortunately, this continues to be a jobless recovery, and unemployment is expected to exceed 10% through the first half of next year.
And that’s not even considering the so-called "underemployment" rate, which is between 16-20%, depending on whom you ask (and how you count).
We might get a little direction on the U.S. macro plan on Thursday, when President Obama holds his "Jobs Summit", at which he will have lunch with a bunch of rich, employed white guys, and figure out how to magically make jobs appear after $787 billion failed to do so. And it’s even trickier now, now that his Democrat base wants him to create the jobs without spending any more money (they want the money spent on healthcare). It’s also interesting that Obama has said that the government has done what it can, so now it’s time to hear from the private sector (which makes sense with the Summit), while people like Jack Reed (D-RI) are basically saying that the government should extend its involvement in the private sector by subsidizing job growth.
But at least he’s keeping a good outlook on the whole mess, quipping that he "saved or created four turkeys" at the annual White House turkey pardoning.
So while the U.S. stumbles along with little or conflicting direction, law firms just stumble along. After the jump, firms’ most-recent efforts to return to profitability (and a big announcement from Law Shucks).

Continue reading “Thanksgiving Week in Layoffs: 11.30.09″

Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks, which has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.

It was pretty hard to miss this week’s big news: unemployment crashed through the 10% barrier, hitting 10.2% in October – the highest level since 1983 (and, of course, worse than predicted). Underemployment also hit record levels, with the number of self-reported disenfranchised and under-utilized people reaching 17.5%.

Republicans jumped on the numbers as a sign that Obama’s package has failed, and the White House countered that it has saved almost 700,000 jobs. But that claim doesn’t even come close to addressing the original estimates and is completely unmeasurable. Still, the administration is reconsidering ideas it had previously rejected, like a highway bill and a business tax credit for new hires, even as they ask for two versions of a budget: one with flat spending and another with a 5% cut.

Law firms got their place in the MSM sun this week, as Bloomberg used a former law-firm employee as an example of increased migration to areas perceived as having jobs:

Some people are pulling up stakes and moving to where they think the job prospects may be brighter. Beth Rubin, 41, lost her position as a receptionist at the law firm Goldstein Bershad & Fried, PC in Southfield, Michigan, in October. The resident of Ferndale, a Detroit suburb, is now selling her furniture and moving to Georgia. “I’m looking to get a job in Georgia, and I don’t know about the job market there, but I can tell you Michigan is horrible,” Rubin said in a telephone interview.

Of course, anything has to be better than Detroit.

More on the highs and lows in the legal sector, after the jump.

Continue reading “This Week in Layoffs: 11.07.09″

Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks, which has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.

We took the week off last week, but you didn’t miss much. In fact, we had another run of almost two weeks without a layoff, before WilmerHale laid off 57 staff. But we’ll get back to the layoffs after our regular sojourn through the broader American economy.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, this should sound familiar: initial jobless claims were worse than expected. 49 states and territories reported increased unemployment, with four seeing improvement. To the extent you believe this is a recovery (and even if you do, whether you believe this is sustainable is another question entirely), it appears to be jobless at best, and job-losing more likely.

Companies are salvaging net income numbers almost entirely on the expense side, and the stimulus has done nothing to create job and nothing demonstrable to save jobs. Just ask the Republicans, who point out that President Obama claimed his stimulus would create 3.5 million jobs, when the actual result has been a loss of 2.7 million – a 6.2 million-job deficit.

Part of the frustration, of course, is the long-running treatment of disillusioned jobseekers and people whose benefits have run out as not being counted as unemployed. When minor improvements in unemployment numbers were being hyped a few months ago, it now appears that was almost entirely the result of people falling off the rolls, not actually finding gainful employment. Maddeningly, that means 7,000 people a day are no longer counted as unemployed.

As usual, law firms continue to muddle through. Their efforts, after the jump.

Continue reading “This Week in Layoffs: 10.26.09″

Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks, which has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.
Many people fear that this will be a "jobless recovery" and those people keep getting more justification for their concerns. Unfilled positions fell to the lowest level since the Department of Labor began tracking the statistic in 2000, falling to 2.39 million, which is less than half of the number of spots available at the peak just back in July 2007.
That’s the heart of the increasing schism between the fantastic run on the major US equity indices since March (when law-firm layoffs peaked) and increasing unemployment. Earnings have been improving due to cost reduction, not "real" growth, and that’s likely to continue.

The U.S. economy may grow at an average 2.8 percent pace annual pace in the second half of the year, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month. Consumer spending, after rebounding last quarter as auto sales jumped because of the government’s “cash-for-clunkers” plan, will probably decelerate in the last three months of the year as the jobless rate reaches 10 percent, the survey showed.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week said economic growth next year probably won’t be strong enough to “substantially” bring down unemployment. The jobless rate will “still probably be above 9 percent by the end of 2010,” Bernanke said.

Sadly, the factor that has done the most to keep the unemployment rate down seems to be the massive number of people whose benefits are expiring or have simply given up looking, and thus no longer count.
It wasn’t a particularly good news in the legal corner either. For the first time in a few months, four of the AmLaw Global 100 have had reported layoffs in the same week. (Law Shucks did a comprehensive analysis, complete with charts, of all the layoffs in the Global 100 last week.)
Details of those layoffs, plus other cost-cutting measures, after the jump.

Continue reading “This Week In Layoffs: 10.10.09″

On the one hand, according to Law Shucks, September was almost three times worse for layoffs than August. On the other hand, that’s still a lot better than May.
While we’ve been focused on the U.S. market, Law Shucks reports that the biggest September layoffs happened in the U.K.

Of the seven firms that laid people off, the biggest by far was Eversheds, which laid off 117 people (22 lawyers, 95 staff) – the largest layoff in over two months. The second-largest was UK IP firm Marks & Clerk, which laid off 60 people as it consolidated offices and scaled back due to the downturn (in a story broken by us, thanks to tipsters).

Still, as regular readers know, September was far from quiet on the home front.
Click the link below to see all of the numbers in easy-to-understand graphical form.
The Month in Layoffs – September 09 [Law Shucks]

Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.

We draft this column by starting with the relevant articles from the past week in the legal sector, then tying in the broader economic data. We were quite happy to see that the law-firm layoff numbers this week were good – perfect, in fact – a week without layoffs for just the second time this year (the other was the week ending August 14).

And we weren’t the only ones pleasantly surprised. For the third straight week, initial jobless claims declined, down to 530,000 against an anticipated 550,000. Continuing claims also declined, but as we’ve said repeatedly, that seems to be more the result of benefits running out and people giving up (which means they no longer count as unemployed, in a bizarre example of government logic), than actual job creation.

After the jump, we turn to the legal sector.

Continue reading “This Week In Layoffs: 09.28.09″

Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.

A piece in Wednesday’s WSJ brought into stark relief the futility of using unemployment data for any sort of analysis, as we futilely do every week. Even the states and the federal government can’t agree on how the numbers should be calculated. Not surprisingly, the assumptions being made are largely influenced by the message the economist wants (or is nudged) to give.

The most visible figures available to evaluate the job market are unemployment rates, which don’t speak well for the stimulus package. The national rate of joblessness last month was 9.7%, up from 8.5% in March, the month after the stimulus act was passed. A week after that number was released, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers reported that the stimulus had increased employment to a level by “slightly more than 1 million jobs higher than it otherwise would have been.”

That awkward wording says a lot: It reflects the tough job facing any economist who tries to estimate job creation. In every method used, economists are forced to imagine an alternate reality — one built on assumptions that are easily challenged. …

The White House method assumes that things were getting worse and that the stimulus is the sole factor responsible for stopping the bleeding. So economists imagined an alternative reality whereby the present would have been much worse — to the tune of one million more lost jobs.

So with that in mind, unemployment was up again, even as Obama and Bernanke are announcing that the recession, "from a technical perspective," may be over.

Perhaps the slowdown in law-firm layoffs is a leading indicator? The activity in our little corner of the economy, after the jump.

Continue reading “Last Week in Layoffs: 09.21.09″

It already looks like September will be a month rife with layoffs. But before we bunker down for a bumpy fall, let’s take one last look at the end of a peaceful summer. Law Shucks has done his monthly round-up of an August that was mild on the layoff front:

The month set records (in a good way) in every major category: fewest total layoffs, layoffs of lawyers, layoff of legal staff, firms laying people off, etc.
Most notably, for the first time since December 2008, there was a week without a layoff.

Is it just the eye of the storm, or are big layoffs in Biglaw a thing of the past? Click the link below for all of the charts and trend lines.
The Month in Layoffs – August 09 [Law Shucks]