Microsoft to Ax 5K Jobs

Don't they know Obama wants to heap money on infrastructure?

(NEWSER) - Caterpillar Inc will cut 20,000 jobs—or 18% of its workforce—after posting a 32% drop in fourth-quarter income, the Wall Street Journal reports. “We were whipsawed in the fourth quarter,” said CEO Jim Owens. “Key industries were hit by a rapidly deteriorating global economy.” The manufacturer of heavy machinery is often seen as an indicator for various parts of the economy, particularly construction. More»

(NEWSER) - FedEx net income plunged 75% in the third quarter, the company announced today, a bad sign for economists who consider the shipping giant a bellwether. FedEx also announced plans to cut $1 billion in costs, though it didn’t detail how many job cuts that might entail. The company has already lowered salaries, with CEO Fred Smith taking a 20% pay cut. Shares fell 5.9% in premarket trading, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Downsizing binge will rival that of financial crisis

(NEWSER) - Wall Street's job creators aren't exactly living up to that billing. The market is soaring, and so are bank profits, but financial firms are preparing for a massive round of layoffs, analysts tell Fortune , estimating that the banks will cut nearly 21,000 jobs. That would be a bloodbath on par with the one that occurred during the financial crisis; 28,000 were eliminated in that purge, but that number included jobs lost in the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and at the time firms were failing, not prospering. More»

A little less than 5 bucks, according to their latest earnings

(NEWSER) - Ever wonder how much money you're worth to Facebook? Earlier we reported that the social network supreme had a really lousy quarter , but Tech Crunch dug deeper into the numbers and did this interesting bit of math: Facebook reported having 901 million users and $1.058 billion in revenue. So if it maintains that rate over a full year, it would make an average of $4.69 to $4.81 on each user each year. More»

Revenue and profit dip, scaring analysts

(NEWSER) - People planning on snapping up Facebook shares in its upcoming IPO got a nasty surprise as the company announced its first quarter-to-quarter revenue and profit slide in at least two years. Facebook blamed the drop on seasonal advertising trends, but "it was a much faster slowdown than we would have guessed," one analyst tells Reuters . "No matter how you slice it, for a company that is perceived as growing so rapidly, to slow so much … will be somewhat concerning to investors." More»