New U.S. Unemployment Claims Drop To 421,000
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment compensation dropped to 421,000 for the week ending Dec. 4, a decrease of 17,000 claims from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Not all jobless workers are insured by the unemployment compensation program. The advance seasonally adjusted rate of insured unemployed workers was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, which was a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.4 percent, the DOL said in a statement.
The DOL also released the figures for the week ending Nov. 27 for the advance number of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, which was 4,086,000. That was a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week’s revised number of 4,277,000 insured unemployed.
Advance unadjusted figures for the week ending Nov. 27 showed the percentage of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment compensation was 3.3 percent. However, the unemployment rate during that week was 9.6 percent.
Figures for the number of unemployed Americans claiming benefits under all unemployment compensation programs was from a week earlier, or the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938.
Extended unemployment compensation benefits, for jobless Americans who are covered by that insurance program, were available in 35 states and the District of Columbia for the week ending Nov. 20.
Those states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
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Jan. 1 License Deadline for CA LOs
Loan originators in California will have to be licensed and listed in the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry as of Jan. 1, 2011. The law exempts those who work for banks that take customer deposits. “It really should help keep the bad actors out of the business,” a spokesman for the California Department of Real Estate said.
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Google Goes Fashionable With Boutiques.com
California, United States (AHN) – After helping people around the world search and learn about anything under the sun, popular search engine Google has come up with an online fashion store, which it calls “Boutiques.com.”
This store would allow the users to “create and edit” their own boutiques through computer vision and machine learning technology.
The technology used in this application would help the users to “visually analyse your taste and match it to items you would like,” according to Google Product Management Director Munjal Shah.
Besides establishing their own creative style, the users of boutiques.com will also be able to follow the fashion designers, stylists and celebrities on the website and follow their trends.
Boutiques.com is currently being used by actresses like Ginniger Goodwin, Mary and Ashley Olsen and Carey Mulligan.
Fashion designers who have turned their attention to boutiques.com even before its formal launch, include Tory Burch, Oscar de la Renta and Isaac Mizrahi.
Shah says that the celebrities will not only guide other users in terms of style and taste, but will also curate items that they love themselves. Shah said, “Our machine learning algorithms use this information to enable you to shop all of the inventory in the style of that taste-maker, on top of the 50 items they’ve hand curated.”
Although the website is currently available to users based in America only, Google plans to expand its horizons beyond American borders.
The new attempt by Google at changing fashion commerce is expected to result in significant changes in how fashion is sold in the virtual world.
The boutiques.com site is not just a source of inspiration for the users, but also a place where anybody can show off their fashion sense. For instance, if one doesn’t know how to wear the leopard print pumps, all one has to do is go to the street-style photo panel and check out the visualizations.
The technology used on this website was developed by Like.com, acquired for USD 100 million by Google last year. One of the salient features of this website is that you can download stuff very fast, despite a large number of results shown for your search.
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Incoming Republican House Speaker Wants to Keep Tax Cuts
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Rep. John Boehner said Wednesday he plans to use the new political power he would gain as Speaker of the House to continue tax cuts for middle-income and wealthy Americans.
Boehner spoke at a press conference in the U.S. Capitol to update the news media on how the House of Representatives is transitioning to a Republican majority.
“Extending all of the current tax rates and making them permanent will reduce the uncertainty” about the economy, Boehner said.
Tax cuts instituted by the Bush Administration are set to expire at the end of this year.
President Barack Obama said he agrees the tax cuts should be extended for middle-income Americans but is reluctant to extend them for the wealthy.
A permanent extension of the tax cuts is “the most important thing we can do,” said Boehner, an Ohio Republican.
He is set to become the new Speaker of the House after the midterm elections gave Republicans the House majority they need to replace Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Boehner plans to meet with Obama next week to discuss the tax cuts and other transition issues.
The cuts lowered taxes for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year and families earning less than $250,000. The two categories include 98 percent of Americans.
Obama said recently in a “60 Minutes” television interview the U.S. Treasury would lose $700 billion over the next decade if tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year remain in effect.
Boehner took a jab at Pelosi during his press conference in the Capitol when he said he would continue to commute between Washington, D.C., and his home district in Ohio by commercial aircraft.
Pelosi uses military aircraft to fly home to California.
Meanwhile, Boehner’s Republican colleagues are pressuring him to abandon the traditional seniority system in assigning leaders to House committees.
Committee leaders are appointed by the Speaker of the House. Traditionally, the most senior members of committees are given the chairmanships.
Republican congressmen Jerry Lewis of California and Hal Rogers of Kentucky said recently that Arizona Republican Jeff Flake should be given a prominent role on the House Appropriations Committee.
Lewis and Rogers both have seniority over Flake on the Appropriations Committee.
However, Flake is known as a conservative budget-cutter and tax break advocate.
The Appropriations Committee designates how tax revenue is allocated among House committees.
The American Conservative Union is circulating a petition on Capitol Hill that urges Boehner to search for new talent in committee leadership rather than relying on seniority.
Appointing committee chairmen based on seniority “would be a signal to the millions of independents and members of the Tea Party movement who took a chance on Republicans in the election, that you have ignored their message of change, and that instead it will be business as usual in Washington,” the petition says.
Any decisions on how Boehner will choose Republican Party leaders in Congress is likely to come out of the transition team meetings that continued Wednesday.
The 22-member transition team is meeting to set rules they will follow during the move into a new Republican majority in Congress.
“Our goal is to look at how we can make the U.S. House of Representatives more open, more transparent, more accessible to the American people … in terms of how to improve legislative policy, how we can get to job number one, which is creating jobs, and how we can get at reducing deficit spending,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the transition team, said during a press conference.
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Home Values Continue To Decline To Near Unprecedented Levels
Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – U.S. third quarter home values fell for the 17th consecutive quarter. Home values are now on average 25 percent below their June 2006 peak.
Rising from 22.5 percent in the second quarter, 23.2 percent of single-family homeowners with mortgages were underwater on their mortgage in the third quarter.
In some markets, as many as four out of five single-family homeowners with mortgages were underwater on their mortgages in the third quarter. Las Vegas had the highest percentage, with 80.2 percent in negative equity, followed by Phoenix with 68.4 percent.
“While not unexpected, the unceasing declines in home values signal that we’re in for a long, bleak winter of continued troubles for the housing market,” said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. “The length and depth of the current housing recession is rivaling the Great Depression’s real estate downturn, and, with encouraging signs fading, will easily eclipse it in the coming months.
In five California metro area markets- Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Ventura – home values began to fall again after five consecutive quarters of increases. Other markets such as Boston and Denver showed signs of stabilization in previous quarters but are now faltering by showing signs of flattening or becoming negative.
“The high percentage of homeowners in negative equity continues to be troubling, in that it represents a huge number of people who are not only more vulnerable to foreclosure, but who are essentially trapped in their current homes and are prevented from selling and buying a new home.”
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Republicans seize control of U.S. House
Voter anxiety about the struggling economy and discontent with Obama’s leadership fueled big Republican gains that dealt a sharp rebuke to President Barack Obama.
Disenchanted U.S. voters swept Democrats from power in the House of Representatives and strengthened the ranks of Senate Republicans on Tuesday in an election rout that dealt a sharp rebuke to President Barack Obama.
Two years after Obama won the White House, voter anxiety about the struggling economy and discontent with his leadership fueled big Republican gains that toppled Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from power and ushered in a new era of divided government.
Networks projected Republicans would pick up at least 60 House seats, more than the 39 they needed for a majority that would elevate conservative John Boehner to House speaker, put Republicans in charge of House committees and slam the brakes on Obama’s agenda.
It surpassed the Republican sweep in 1994, when President Bill Clinton’s Democrats lost 54 House seats, and was the biggest shift in power since Democrats lost 75 House seats in 1948.
“Our new majority will be prepared to do things differently,” Boehner told supporters at a Washington hotel. “It starts with cutting spending instead of increasing it, reducing the size of government instead of increasing it, and reforming the way Congress works.”
Obama made a late-night call to congratulate Boehner and discuss ways they could work together to create jobs and improve the economy, a Boehner aide said.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid won the country’s most high-profile Senate race after a brutal battle with Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle in Nevada. He said he was determined to renew the struggle to create jobs and bolster the economy.
“The bell that just rang isn’t the end of the fight, it’s the start of the next round,” he told jubilant supporters in Nevada.
Democrats also won key Senate races in West Virginia and California, where Senator Barbara Boxer won re-election, ensuring they would retain at least a slender Senate majority.
Senate Republicans gained six seats, and the re-election bids of two other Democratic incumbents — Michael Bennet in Colorado and Patty Murray in Washington — were too close to call.
Republican control of the House will likely spark legislative gridlock, weakening Obama’s hand in fights over the extension of soon-to-expire income-tax cuts and the passage of comprehensive energy or immigration bills. “The ability of this administration to get major new programs done was already limited. This just seals the deal,” said Jaret Seiberg, policy analyst with the investment advisory firm, Washington Research Group.
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How to Forecast Sales in an Uncertain Economy
Forecasting sales can be wildly difficult in even the best of times. And in the midst of a wobbly economic recovery following a substantial recession, projecting revenue takes on an even more Herculean quality.
Most CEOs got a nasty reality check toward the end of 2008 when it became crystal clear that consumers were spending less and customers frequently bailed out of big contracts at the last minute. “We were 15 minutes away from a $100,000 purchase order and we got a call saying ‘the boss said don’t sign anything,’” recalls Seth Earley of Earley & Associates, an IT consulting firm in Stowe, Massachusetts.
Can you really plan for a scenario like that? It’s tough. But the good news is that a number of smart CEOs we spoke to have taken what they’ve learned over the past three years and come up with some pretty solid ways to forecast revenue. What they all seem to have in common: a more conservative approach to forecasting; more frequent adjustments to those forecasts; and a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2011. Here are some of the forecasting strategies they’re using:
Sales Forecasting: Update Constantly
At the beginning of each fiscal year, the leadership team at T3, a $35 million Austin-based advertising agency, takes a stab at forecasting sales for the entire year, but then adjusts those numbers every month based on input from eight to 10 account directors.
“We go to each of them every month and ask them to give us a 12-month projection,” says COO Lee Gaddis. “We ask everyone to be conservative.”
At the end of every month, Charles Kiley, the firm’s CFO, sits down with the account directors to compare invoices to the forecast, plots a trend line, and reports back to senior management, including chief executive Gay Gaddis. At that point, the team makes a “buy, hold, or sell” decision on hiring and expenses. “We think forecasting is one of the most critical things we do,” says Lee Gaddis. “Employees are our single biggest expense, so we need to know what we have in the pipeline.”
Forecast for 2011 : “We’re thinking the economy may ease a bit in 2011 but it’s still going to be tough. In times like these you have to make your own good luck.”
Dig Deeper: How to Manage a Sales Pipeline
Sales Forecasting: Plan for the Best, Average and Worst
Orb Audio CEO Ethan Siegel makes three different spreadsheets for his high-end speaker manufacturing business.
“We try to walk the fine line of making sure we are profitable if the worst case comes true, but also have enough product and staff to support the best case predictions,” says Siegel, whose company is based in New York City.
This year, the company grew by 30 percent, with growth fueled largely by foreign sales driven by a weak dollar. “We never would have guessed that we’d grow that much,” says Siegel. “But because we also planned for best case and built up inventory, we weren’t caught with our pants down.”
In the short term, Siegel looks carefully at the month-to-month growth rate in the previous year to predict revenue in the coming months. “It’s been very accurate for us since speaker sales do tend to follow a seasonal pattern,” he says. “People are more likely to spend their money on indoor entertainment in cold months.”
Forecast for 2011 : “Although we expect 2011 to have some challenging months, we also anticipate annual sales growth greater than 20 percent due to new product releases and strong international sales momentum.”
Dig Deeper: 7 Common Sales Mistakes
Sales Forecasting: Manage Variables Creatively
Every business deals with uncontrollable variables that can wreak havoc on sales forecasts. For Terry McBride, CEO of Burns & McBride Home Comfort, a $25-million heating oil distributor in Wilmington, Delaware, those variables include the weather and the price of oil.
“Our forecasts were usually 7 to 8 percent off because we were overly optimistic,” says McBride. “And we’d always blame it on the weather.”
To narrow such misses, McBride partnered with grad students at Marquette University to create proprietary software that measures the consumption of individual customers and plots it against the weather. The result: more accurate predictions on oil usage, lower delivery costs, and happier customers who are less likely to run out of oil unexpectedly. That all added up to sales forecasts that were off by as little as 1 or 2 percent.
Forecast for 2011 : “We expect flat gross revenue sales and customer growth when compared to the prior year. The bright spot, however, is in HVAC retrofit sales area (replacement of existing residential heating and A/C systems) where we project a significant lift (20 percent) from last year’s levels.”
Dig Deeper: How to Manage Seasonal Fluctuations in Sales
Sales Forecasting: Measure Customer and Employee Satisfaction
This tip might feel a little easier said than done and possibly a headscratcher for the purposes of sales. But not for Spencer Brown, the CEO of RentAGreenBox in Costa Mesa, California. Brown, whose company makes moving boxes from recycled material and is on track to gross more than $3 million a year, doesn’t believe in annual forecasting.
“Looking at past sales to determine future sales is a flawed model,” he says.
Instead, he forecasts quarterly sales using his own formula, based on six years of experience. Ninety percent of his projection is equally based on the company’s quality of customer service, which he measures through social media interaction, including Yelp ratings (the company has a five-star rating); the enthusiasm level of his employees and how efficiently they’re serving customers; and the company’s ability to stock enough inventory to meet every customer’s needs. Lastly, he layers in a 10 percent “unknown factor” based on his personal experience in the marketplace – conversations with shop owners, mechanics, plumbers, and farmers market vendors. If the first three factors are all on track, Brown forecasts 13 percent growth the next quarter, but he adjusts that up or down based on how those conversations go. “We’re accurate within 1 percent every quarter,” he says.
Forecast for 2011: “We’re going national in 2011 and our growth will be phenomenal!”
Dig Deeper: How to Improve Your Customer Service
Sales Forecasting: Pick a Number, any Number .
Jason Loeb, chief executive of Sudsies, a multi-million dollar dry cleaning company in Miami, is adamant about “not letting the numbers drive my business.” Other people’s numbers, that is. When the recession hit, revenues in the dry cleaning industry plummeted. But Loeb had his own ideas about where he wanted his own revenues to go.
“I made a forecast, then came up with a way to fulfill it,” he says. When the economy started tanking and others were panicking, he added new services, such as environmentally friendly and couture cleaning, and forked over the marketing dollars to promote them.
“People who spend $7,000 on a suit need someone who knows how to take care of it,” he reasoned. The result: his sales were up 9 percent in 2009 and are on track for a 40 percent increase this year.
Forecast for 2011 : “We are planning for a 40 percent growth in 2011. We are finding new innovative ways to improve the customer experience which will continue to help attract new clients and retain our existing ones.”
Dig Deeper: Business Forecasting in a Crazy, Mixed-up World
Sales Forecasting: Final Thoughts
Forecasting involves a little art, a little science, and would definitely be a lot easier with a very large crystal ball. How you forecast depends a lot on what industry you’re in, your company culture, and the number of variables that are just beyond your control. The good news: solid experience with forecasting sales in good times and bad should help everyone make more accurate predictions in the coming years.
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California Lender Boasts Hirings, Increased Lines
First California Mortgage reported that it has boosted it warehouse lending capacity by more than $100 million this year. A combination of the increased lines as well as increased mortgage demand has fueled new hirings. First Cal said that around 70 employees have been hired since June.
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California Legislature passes state budget
One hundred days after the beginning of the fiscal year, California officials on Friday adopted the state’s latest budget, a plan to solve a $19 billion deficit with no new taxes or severe cuts to services. Gov. Arnold…
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Caltrain Approves Fare Hike; Stops Four Midday Trains
San Francisco, CA, United States (AHN) – California’s commuter train service, Caltrain, has approved a proposal to raise fares and cut service to address a $2.3 million budget shortfall.
The rail service’s board of directors voted Thursday to charge 25 cents more for each zone. The increase means a rider traveling from San Francisco to Atherton stations will pay $6.50 instead of $6.00. Caltrain has six zones beginning in San Francisco and ending in Gilroy.
The price of the annual Go Pass will be $155, up from $140.
The board also decided to stop midday trains 236, 237, 256 and 257. The four trains ply the San Francisco-San Jose route.
The changes take effect on Jan. 1.
Caltrain expects to earn an additional $1.4 million from the zone fare hike, and $150,000 from the Go Pass increase.
The agency has received more than 1,500 comments from riders during a month-long public comment period. Some groups had put forth formal proposals, such as the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
Caltrain had been considering more cuts but decided against reducing weekday early morning and evening service since many commuters would be left without a means to get to work.
Agency executive director Michael Scanlon made clear last month the changes would be the first of many because of a projected budget deficit of nearly $30 million in fiscal year 2012.
“These will be the good old days compared to what we will face in July,” Scanlon had said.
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