A total of 184,500 new jobs were announced during the first quarter of 2007, the ERM quarterly reports. The largest number of announced job creations was found in the UK, accounting for 29% of the total. This is largely due to one single case, John Lewis Ltd, which announced the creation of 35,000 jobs over the next 10 years. Also in the commerce sector, Asda announced the creation of 8,000 jobs in the UK by the end of 2007. As in the previous quarter, Poland ranks second, its planned job creation being distributed among many cases. The largest ones are the Polish police force and the mining company KGHM, which announced the creation of 7,000 and 2,300 jobs, respectively. In Germany, Romania and France, just a few cases made up the main share of planned job creation.
During the same period, 132,700 job cuts were announced. The Czech Republic records the largest number of job losses, followed by France, the UK, Italy and Germany. In this quarter, these five countries make up 77.5% of all announced job losses. Similar to previous reports in the ERM quarterly, the most frequent category is internal restructuring, which has increased its share to 76.8% (59.6% in the previous quarter), followed by bankruptcy/closure (9.9%). It is notable that off-shoring/delocalisation only amounts to 5.5% of all jobs lost, below the 9% mark reported in previous quarters.
The thematic sections of this edition of the ERM quarterly explore the restructuring cases of Alcatel-Lucent, the Franco-US technologies giant, and EADS, the leading European aerospace and defence group. The report also provides a brief overview of recent restructuring activities in Malta and Cyprus.
