The Issue With Jobs

It has been one year since the death of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple with Steve Wozniak, and there has been a steady increase in Apple sales. Particularly, the release of the IPhone and the IPad are signifcant to the profit margin of the company.  Many mobile phone carriers have been recalcitrant to pick up Apple as a major subscriber because the customer money tends to be channeled into the product rather than into the mobile phone or internet service provider. Virgin has recently picked up a number of Apple products.

While Job's work continues, including a documentary in the 1980's featuring the stalwart, a number of companies have systematically changed their corporate structure to adapt to the new technology that abounds and creates more efficiences.

Earlier this year, 35,000 postal jobs were on the chopping block speaking to closing of post offices across the nations primarily because of the cost to tax payers.  The move was stopped by lawmakers in the US and the planned refurbishment will be revised in order to alleviate unneccessary expenses in the Postal system.

The electronics industry has been particularly hit with 10,000 jobs lost with Sony, 2,000 jobs lost with Yahoo, 50 stores being closed by Best Buy, 30,000 jobs with Hewlett Packard, 2,000 jobs with Research in Motion and 2,700 jobs with Olympus.

The boost in technology in some places takes away the need for jobs and the profit margins of companies suffer when the number of paid employees who do not facilitate company development begins to take too much money from the revenue stream of companies.

Polaroid in 2001 decided to undergo a US$4.5 million dollar restructuring attempt, while ten year later Kodak has done the same with $8.5 million in restructuring involving 200 dowstream workers and 119 middle management workers.

It is maybe that the job market for some of these larger companies is indicative of a lagging economy for youth attempting to enter the workforce (even though micro, small and medium businesses tend to make up the bulk of the economy).

As Eric Schmidt the Google CEO said in a previous post during commencement addresses to both Cal-Berkeley and Boston University, turn off your mobile device for 1-hour a day and turn to the person that you love.  It might save jobs.