A giant plant in Illinois now announces surprising layoffs, affecting a total of 215 workers according the a WARN notice.
Deli meats manufacturer Land O’Frost will lay off 215 workers when it shutters its plant in Pullman, Illinois, according to a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice filed on April 29.
The plant produces specialty meats for one of its brands, DaBecca Natural Foods, which Land O’Frost acquired in 2022.
The job cuts are scheduled to start June 17, according to the WARN notice.
Production will move to other locations in the company’s U.S. manufacturing network, a Land O’Frost spokesperson told Manufacturing Dive in an email.
The company did not specify the reason behind the closure, but noted impacted employees will receive comprehensive severance packages with benefits.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision to make due to its impact on a group of dedicated team members and one we put much thought into.
We are confident that consolidating operations will enhance our ability to serve our customers effectively and to our standard of excellence,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Land O’Frost is headquartered in Munster, Indiana, and employs about 1,500 people, according to its website.
The family-owned company operates another Illinois plant in Lansing, also in the Chicago area, as well as factories in Madisonville, Kentucky, and Searcy, Arkansas, according to its LinkedIn.
Land O’Frost is among several food manufacturers closing plants and reducing headcounts this year.
In April, Conagra Brands announced plans to close its Wisconsin Birds Eye plant and lay off 252 people.
That same month Del Monte Foods said it will shutter two plants to “align and streamline operational capacity with consumer demand.”
And meat giant Tyson Foods is laying off a whopping 1,276 manufacturing jobs at a pork plant in Iowa — its eighth facility closure since the start of 2023.
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Other Economy News Today
Applications for unemployment benefits now surge to new highs, a sign that the white-hot labor market is starting to cool off.
First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to 231,000, the highest level since August, per CNN.
Thursday’s data also showed that the number of continuing claims, or applications from people who have filed for unemployment for at least one week, was 1.78 million.
That’s an increase of 17,000 from the prior week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The latest numbers come less than a week after the monthly jobs report showed the US economy added just 175,000 positions in April, less than economists expected and a steep drop-off from prior months.
US employers have now added an average of 245,500 jobs per month, versus 2023’s 251,000-per-month average.
Still, hiring remains strong. Although the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% last month, it’s the 27th consecutive month that the jobless rate has held under 4%, matching a streak last seen in the late 1960s.
Weekly jobless claims data tends to be volatile but, while one week’s worth of data “does not a trend make,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.
“We can no longer be sure that calm seas lie ahead for the US economy if today’s weekly jobless claims are any indication.”
“Company layoffs are picking up, hinting at caution on the part of companies as they weigh the outlook for the second half of the year,” he wrote in a note Thursday.
The Federal Reserve has been battling inflation by raising its key lending rate in the hopes of slowing the economy.
While the labor market has so far resisted those efforts, remaining white hot for the past 18 months despite 11 rate hikes from the central bank, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that demand has “cooled from its extremely high level of a couple of years ago.”
Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Economics said in a note Thursday: “We’d need to see at least a month of elevated readings to convince us that the trend really has turned.”
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