

Apple axes 1,600 full-time retail positions - yvesrn
http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/04/24/apple.loses.1600.at.retail/

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electromagnetic
This is misleading, they lost 1,600 full-time (or equivalent) workers. This
could mean a lot of their part-time workers getting extra hours could no
longer get extra hours, it doesn't mean they 'axed' 1,600 full-time positions,
they likely cut the hours of 1,600 part-time employees.

Then there's the whole, it was the Christmas season. I bet if you look back at
records for the past decade there's either been a decline in employees in Q2
as apposed to Q1 or that their growth rate stalls in the Q2 as they no longer
need new workers. Then I bet if you look at Q4, there's a big employment spike
for the Christmas season.

There's too many variables here to say Apple predicted the recession. Maybe
they did, however there's much more practical reasons why this decision would
have been made.

The best reason I can think of is that when the economy started to falter,
they reduced part-time workers hours. I don't know about Apples statistics,
but most retail companies tend to have double (or more) the number of part-
time workers as full-time (usually due to paying less in benefits). This
likely means Apple has 28,000 part-time employees, 1,600 of which could have
been working extra at Christmas to, you know, pay _for_ Christmas.

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TJensen
Once again, a title shouts "Panic at the economy" while the actual meat of the
article says something completely different.

