December job cuts up year-over-year

Florida employers trim 1,738 positions

Job cuts in December rose in Florida and nationally, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Florida employers trimmed 1,738 jobs during the month compared with 515 in December 2015.

But for the year, job cuts decreased to 13,488 in 2016 compared with 16,947 in 2015. The largest job cuts in South Florida were at call center company Sitel Corp. in Pompano Beach and cruise line company Carnival Corp. & PLC in Doral.

Separately, the Oceanside Extended Care Center, a private nursing home in Miami Beach, notified the state of Florida this week that it laid off 253 people on Dec 30, 2016. The numbers were not incuded in the Challenger report.

While announced in December, the job cuts at Sitel are scheduled between Feb. 14 and 28, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification posted in mid-December. Pompano Beach city manager Dennis Beach said Sitel had notified the city about the layoffs and blamed the loss of contracts.

Sitel Corp. spokeswoman Shirley Loebsack said in a statement the layoff was the result of an “unforeseen shift in business” and that Sitel was pursuing new business opportunities for the call center located at 2528 NW 19th St. in Pompano Beach.

Roger Frizzell, spokesman for Doral-based Carnival, said the company is transferring a group of IT employees to a firm called Capgemini. The 140 affected employees were offered employment with Capgemini for at least six months. Sixty of the positions were in South Florida, he said.

“This is not a cost-savings initiative, but rather an effort to improve and strengthen our IT operation,” Frizzell said.

Nationwide, downsizing ticked up slightly to close out 2016, as employers announced plans to shed 33,627 jobs from payrolls in December, Challenger said.

December job cuts were 42 percent higher than the same month a year ago, when employers announced planned layoffs totaling 23,622, which was the lowest monthly total in more than 15 years.

The heaviest job cuts in 2016 occurred in the energy sector, which announced 107,714 layoffs during the year, up 14 percent from 2015.

Florida’s official unemployment numbers for December are scheduled to be released Jan. 20.