The cuts affect the main business workers in downtown Seattle and not the actual bank branches at this point.
In other words, GOOD PAYING MANAGEMENT AND IT JOBS IN SEATTLE. These are not 9 dollar an hour teller jobs. I wonder how that's going to impact the housing market further.
Can somebody get us a f-ing bailout over here? Bueller? Bueller?
More news. Up to 19,000 jobs to be cut. Bulk of the cuts to be in Seattle due to overlap (so the speculation was probably true). Employees will know what their fate is on Monday.
More news. Up to 19,000 jobs to be cut. Bulk of the cuts to be in Seattle due to overlap (so the speculation was probably true). Employees will know what their fate is on Monday.
How many WaMu employees are in Seattle? I have never seen an estimate larger than 4300. While I think that number seems small relative to the size of buildings they had downtown - absent any new information, sounds like we are talking about 4000 jobs. You certainly can't get anywhere close to 19,000 jobs out of that number.
To put this in perspective, Boeing laid of 30,000 employees in 2001. While they may have made less on average, I would bet that the total impact was greater, and that former Boeing workers were less skilled/re-employable than the people getting pink-slipped at WaMu.
At the end of the year, Washington Mutual had 60,798 employees nationally.
...
Washington Mutual has about 5,000 employees in the downtown core, and Killinger said that total will remain stable or even increase. The company has 5,700 employees in Seattle, 7,700 in King County and 9,600 in Washington, totals that include branch personnel.
So two years ago, they had 61k employees. Right before they crashed, they had 43k. Sounds like they already cut 18k jobs in the last two years so I bet that if anything the number in Washington State shrunk from the totals above.
Did WaMu have any contract labor in the Seattle offices? Janitors, auditors, etc...
I don't know how you compare against Boeing. 30,000 jobs is much higher, but those losses were spread throughout the area rather than focused entirely in the deep downtown. The people laid off by Boeing mostly stayed in the area, the highly desirable WaMu employees will probably move to cities that still have banking centers. Also, some number of those Boeing job losses came back in 2004-2006 as they got their act together again. Boeing was still in business, still an ogliopoly, and still producing a product in high demand. WaMu is out of business, operated in a commodity market, and grew their business around a product that now has no demand.
The 19,000 number comes straight from the article (and other articles on the same subject). I don't know where they got the number, nor how many of that number are in Seattle/King County/Puget Sound. I guess we'll know for sure on Monday. This article speculates that around 3000 out of 4200 Seattle employees will be cut. Maybe when the original article said "bulk" they meant that a plurality of the cuts will happen in Seattle. Also note that the original article said "up to" 19000.
Did WaMu have any contract labor in the Seattle offices? Janitors, auditors, etc...
I don't know how you compare against Boeing. 30,000 jobs is much higher, but those losses were spread throughout the area rather than focused entirely in the deep downtown. The people laid off by Boeing mostly stayed in the area, the highly desirable WaMu employees will probably move to cities that still have banking centers. Also, some number of those Boeing job losses came back in 2004-2006 as they got their act together again. Boeing was still in business, still an ogliopoly, and still producing a product in high demand. WaMu is out of business, operated in a commodity market, and grew their business around a product that now has no demand.
OK, to put it in perspective another way - by the count of this tracker, we lost almost 23k jobs in 2000-01 dot-com unwind. Those jobs never came back. WaMu may have been a point of civic pride but given their wide-spread holdings their local economic impact seems far less signifcant than I would have expected. And as far as layoffs go this is not that big in comparison to layoffs the last downturn - which was comparatively mild vs. the early 80s or 90s.
As to the jobs being "deep downtown" I don't see the relevance. Versus what, in Renton and Everett? All commuting distance to downtown. I doubt that any great proportion of WaMu employees own downtown condos. Certain none of the 10 or so that I know do.
OK, to put it in perspective another way - by the count of this tracker, we lost almost 23k jobs in 2000-01 dot-com unwind. Those jobs never came back. WaMu may have been a point of civic pride but given their wide-spread holdings their local economic impact seems far less signifcant than I would have expected. And as far as layoffs go this is not that big in comparison to layoffs the last downturn - which was comparatively mild vs. the early 80s or 90s.
As to the jobs being "deep downtown" I don't see the relevance. Versus what, in Renton and Everett? All commuting distance to downtown. I doubt that any great proportion of WaMu employees own downtown condos. Certain none of the 10 or so that I know do.
I'm not arguing your point that the WaMu losses are not that big compared to previous downturns. I do, still think there are dynamics that make this a little different (but not necessarily worst).
23K dotcom jobs were not lost for good. Those businesses went down, but newer software businesses have opened or grown in their places. Those who were really unqualified for software work did leave the field, but others did not. More to the point, dotcoms that failed were not profitable, those weren't real jobs. Seattle now lacks a big financial presence, and banking is immensely profitable. This is probably worst than the dotcom bust (which wasn't too bad).
More focused cuts do, I believe, have a psychological impact. It's depressing to drive by a building that used to be a major local employer, but is now empty. It's one thing if this is some 40 year old Boeing plant in Renton vs tall buildings in downtown which define the cities skyline.
That said, it's impossible to compare the sheer number (and especially percentage) of area jobs lost thus far in 2008 with previous downturns when Boeing was THE local employer.
Seattle now lacks a big financial presence, and banking is immensely profitable. This is probably worst than the dotcom bust (which wasn't too bad).
If WaMu was immensely profitable, then JPM wouldn't have been able to buy a whole bunch of valuable real estate for a measly couple $B.
The downturn in 2001 wasn't just dot.com, it was also a very hard time for Boeing.
The real difference then and now is that Seattle is now off the grid for the finance industry. However, with NY, NC, and CA facing severe cutbacks also, those people will not be in a hurry to leave and may switch to another local industry, even though it may be a temporary step back for their career.
Comments
From a Kiro tv article:
http://www.kirotv.com/money/18014814/detail.html
In other words, GOOD PAYING MANAGEMENT AND IT JOBS IN SEATTLE. These are not 9 dollar an hour teller jobs. I wonder how that's going to impact the housing market further.
Can somebody get us a f-ing bailout over here? Bueller? Bueller?
MAYDAY MAYDAY!
How many WaMu employees are in Seattle? I have never seen an estimate larger than 4300. While I think that number seems small relative to the size of buildings they had downtown - absent any new information, sounds like we are talking about 4000 jobs. You certainly can't get anywhere close to 19,000 jobs out of that number.
To put this in perspective, Boeing laid of 30,000 employees in 2001. While they may have made less on average, I would bet that the total impact was greater, and that former Boeing workers were less skilled/re-employable than the people getting pink-slipped at WaMu.
So two years ago, they had 61k employees. Right before they crashed, they had 43k. Sounds like they already cut 18k jobs in the last two years so I bet that if anything the number in Washington State shrunk from the totals above.
I don't know how you compare against Boeing. 30,000 jobs is much higher, but those losses were spread throughout the area rather than focused entirely in the deep downtown. The people laid off by Boeing mostly stayed in the area, the highly desirable WaMu employees will probably move to cities that still have banking centers. Also, some number of those Boeing job losses came back in 2004-2006 as they got their act together again. Boeing was still in business, still an ogliopoly, and still producing a product in high demand. WaMu is out of business, operated in a commodity market, and grew their business around a product that now has no demand.
OK, to put it in perspective another way - by the count of this tracker, we lost almost 23k jobs in 2000-01 dot-com unwind. Those jobs never came back. WaMu may have been a point of civic pride but given their wide-spread holdings their local economic impact seems far less signifcant than I would have expected. And as far as layoffs go this is not that big in comparison to layoffs the last downturn - which was comparatively mild vs. the early 80s or 90s.
As to the jobs being "deep downtown" I don't see the relevance. Versus what, in Renton and Everett? All commuting distance to downtown. I doubt that any great proportion of WaMu employees own downtown condos. Certain none of the 10 or so that I know do.
I'm not arguing your point that the WaMu losses are not that big compared to previous downturns. I do, still think there are dynamics that make this a little different (but not necessarily worst).
23K dotcom jobs were not lost for good. Those businesses went down, but newer software businesses have opened or grown in their places. Those who were really unqualified for software work did leave the field, but others did not. More to the point, dotcoms that failed were not profitable, those weren't real jobs. Seattle now lacks a big financial presence, and banking is immensely profitable. This is probably worst than the dotcom bust (which wasn't too bad).
More focused cuts do, I believe, have a psychological impact. It's depressing to drive by a building that used to be a major local employer, but is now empty. It's one thing if this is some 40 year old Boeing plant in Renton vs tall buildings in downtown which define the cities skyline.
That said, it's impossible to compare the sheer number (and especially percentage) of area jobs lost thus far in 2008 with previous downturns when Boeing was THE local employer.
If WaMu was immensely profitable, then JPM wouldn't have been able to buy a whole bunch of valuable real estate for a measly couple $B.
The downturn in 2001 wasn't just dot.com, it was also a very hard time for Boeing.
The real difference then and now is that Seattle is now off the grid for the finance industry. However, with NY, NC, and CA facing severe cutbacks also, those people will not be in a hurry to leave and may switch to another local industry, even though it may be a temporary step back for their career.
3,400 jobs lost in Seattle.