The chief executive officers of Caterpillar Inc. and Xerox Corp. said hiring at their companies likely won’t accelerate until markets and the economy show more signs of stability.
“We have had to continue reducing employment,” Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We will probably not be able, in a position to, rehire until mid-next year as we see these markets begin to recover.”
Anne Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive of Xerox, said on the same program that “if you look at net head count it’s still coming down, because that’s what our intent is, until we’re sure that things are improving.” She said “we’re hiring, but very modestly.”
On the other hand, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google Inc., sees some good signs. He said that the economy probably will bottom out “sometime over the summer” this year and unemployment will peak “in the early part of 2010.” Markets are “beginning to clear” and a decline in inventories is “a good sign,” he said.
“We’re in a classic recovery of a very long and hard recession,” Schmidt said.
Policy makers including World Bank President Robert Zoellick and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have expressed concern that even though economic figures start to improve and markets begin to recover, unemployment in the US may keep rising. The CEOs’ comments ratify that sentiment.
The jobless rate in May probably reached 9.2 percent, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed ahead of a report Friday from the Labor Department.