Word: trended
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...trend is particularly disturbing because of its implications for foreclosures. As house prices continue to decline and more people find themselves paying mortgages above the value of their properties, the risk increases that they'll start walking away in droves. But "you have to be very careful in jumping to conclusions," says First American chief economist Mark Fleming. "Just because your house is worth less than your outstanding mortgage doesn't mean you're going to go into foreclosure or anything like that." Even for people awash in debt, homes are still places to live. If prices are given enough...
...Another trend: a creeping problem in the Midwest. It's true that property markets never went wild in Des Moines, Iowa, or Omaha, Neb., the way they did in Merced, Calif., and Fort Myers, Fla., but this means even modest declines in home values can erase equity, especially for recent buyers who have less of a cushion against falling prices. In Iowa, 18.6% of homeowners have negative equity; in Nebraska the figure is 16.6% (both jumped more than three percentage points from September). (See pictures of struggling Cleveland...
...with what the Society for Human Resource Management has been observing in its monthly survey of members. In the last three months of 2008, 27% of small firms (fewer than 100 employees) reported decreasing total head count, while 45% of large companies (500 or more workers) did. That trend was due to continue into this year, with 11% of small companies anticipating decreasing staff by the end of March, but 34% of large companies planning such a change...
...Moscarini and Postel-Vinay have another theory. After observing the same broad trend within different industries and states, and even overseas in countries like Denmark and Brazil, they postulate that small companies hire disproportionately more early on in an economic recovery because it's easy for these firms to find good workers while unemployment is still high-and easy for workers to come across small companies since there are so many of them. Once the economy is chugging along at full-steam and the labor market is tight, larger companies regain the advantage, since they're likely able to offer...
...that shift back to large companies as the major force behind jobs generation can take years. The lesson for the short-term seems to be that small companies are a better bet for work. Just be careful of applying the trend to any specific firm. Small companies on average may not be shedding as many jobs as large ones, but smaller companies are by their very nature volatile-looking at aggregate numbers hides all the instances of companies growing insanely quickly or imploding into nothingness. It's still the case that most people work for large companies: 45% at firms...