Run roh raggy...hiring slows, UE ticks up

Anecdotal, but my employer just offered an early retirement package to everyone age 60+. I'm 68 and was planning to retire end of year, anyway, so the package is a nice reason to leave now.

However, when this was offered in the past, essentially, that means they plan a layoff, and need to analyze who is leaving, how to plug holes and then where they can effectively cut out bodies and maintain operations. Then they have to report their plan to the labor department and many of those who turned it down will be let go, anyway.

Honestly all of these cherry picking numbers mean nothing to me. I see with my own eyes and wallet on the daily how fricked we are economically. I think most Americans are the same way. We live the struggle, so the statistics are nothing more than noise.

I work for a Fortune 100 company and we laid off 250 “low performing” employees last week. We usually don’t “layoff” employees, we usually do hiring freezes and shuffle people around so it was a big surprise to everyone.