Job losses since 9/11 attacks top 2.5 million

Computerworld - Ongoing uncertainty about the war on terror has contributed to the loss of more than 2.5 million jobs in the 18 months following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, said John A. Challenger, CEO of Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Job cuts in the 18 months before Sept. 11 tallied 1,642,988 positions lost. From Sept. 11 through the end of February, job losses totaled 2,523,217, an increase of 54%, or 880,988 jobs, Challenger said. The largest losses were in the transportation industry, where 226,674 jobs were eliminated, and the aerospace/defense sector, where 138,937 jobs were cut.
"There is no way to gauge to what degree the effect 9/11 and the war on terror had on the economy," Challenger said in a telephone interview today.
But he noted that since the attacks people have been flying less, which has reduced the number of face-to-face meetings, which he said are vital for creating new partnerships between companies, new ideas and new entrepreneurial opportunities.
"Global business is one of the keys to the turning around of this economy, and it has inevitably been affected," Challenger said.
Challenger said job market problems could be made worse by the war in Iraq and the eroding image of the U.S. abroad. The war footing has caused companies to lay low, which affects trade and can lead to cutbacks in production and a loss of more jobs. In addition, anti-U.S. feeling could affect businesses by shutting them out of potential contracts and markets for their products.
The downside to the global economy is that jobs get exported overseas, Challenger said. The upside is supposed to be that the market for products becomes limitless.
If the U.S. is locked out of markets because of anti-U.S. sentiment, it will hurt economically and could contribute to more job cuts in the months ahead. "If [the war] is drawn out and long and there is not a clear success and there is more chaos, that could continue to destabilize the world economy and the U.S. with it," Challenger said.
Challenger said a quick resolution to the war and an outcome that shows the U.S. in a favorable light might create a kind of "euphoria" in U.S. businesses and spark a boom. He said such a boom came about after the last Gulf War and helped end the recession of the early 1990s. That recession was worse in terms of lost jobs, Challenger said, but it didn't last as long and it also had factors within it that helped reignite the economyafter the war.
In the early 1990s, a number of industries had deregulated, which opened up entrepreneurial opportunities. Major leaps in technology had taken place that allowed for new types of applications and the creation of new industries. And the global market really opened up after the Gulf War.
Unfortunately, he said, there are no corresponding factors present in the current economy.
The one bright spot in Challenger's study of job trends since 9/11 is that the flood of lost IT jobs seems to have slowed, especially in the telecommunications sector, which led all industries in the number of job cuts for quite a while.
Challenger's company studies the job market and issues reports on a regular basis about market trends.