The companies are still shipping jobs overseas further impacting U.S. high-tech unemployment.
IBM Corporation laid off about 2,800 U.S. employees after announcing great financial results in late January. Job cuts continued this month impacting 5,000 more people. Besides IBM, the list of companies that have announced job cuts includes Advanced Micro Devices, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sony, Nokia, and others. Union officials are claiming the companies are sending jobs offshore.
High-tech industry is using euphemisms like “rebalancing”, “restructuring” and “resource action” to blunt the growing chorus of complaints about layoffs. Regardless of how they say it though it means: you’re out of a job.
U.S. engineering unemployment was at a historically low 0.5 percent, but jumped to 2.8 percent last year, and this year’s rate is expected to go up substantially.
