I just read that Toys R Us plans to hire about 45,000 employees for the holidays which will result in its US work force being doubled. This comes on the heels on a report from CEOs of large US companies suggesting that they aren’t as optimistic about upcoming sales or new staffing requirements which suggests that job creation could be muted for the time being at least.

As I mentioned in my last post on Wednesday, with the holiday season approaching, many retailers and other businesses that see a rise during that time of the year – restaurants, caterers to name a few more – increase their workforce in the weeks and months leading up to Christmas in anticipation of the increased business that this holiday season tends to produce.

The Christmas season also tends to be the yardstick by which the retail sector measures its success for the year as many retailers count on this time of the year to make or break their year. Given the last 2 years or so, many of them probably haven’t even been able to count on this holiday season to improve what might already be a fairly bleak economic outlook for their businesses.

In the case of Toys R Us, the increased seasonal employment that they have planned is more than what they’d hired during the 3 years which does sound positive and tends to lead to positive thoughts regarding holiday sales.

This tends to be counter to evidence produced by the Conference Board that suggests that consumer and business confidence is now at its lowest point since February. With unemployment holding at around 10% and with no evidence that job creation is coming to any extent, what does this mean for the average job searcher?

It means that there seems to be very little optimism that things are actually getting better, and in fact the opposite might be true. So as we spoke about on Monday, searching for a new job is still something you should pursue if you feel the time is right. You just need to pick your spots, do your research first to ensure you are going to a worse situation and ensure that if and when you do make a move, it’s to a better place and for the right reasons.

How many times have you heard this phrase recently when talking about job losses in a particular industry or sector? I’ve heard it too many times to remember but it’s true. In many cases, jobs that are being lost will most likely never come back.

In some cases, companies downsize and eliminate jobs and then the remaining staff are simply expected to pick up the slack and do the work that used to be done by the person(s) whose jobs were eliminated.

As more and more jobs – particularly service-related jobs – are sent overseas by major employers, it’s difficult to say if many will ever return. As technology changes, many jobs also become obsolete and they are lost as a result, too.

Customer service jobs are interesting in that some companies such as telcos have faced a backlash and have started to bring their support function back inhouse after sending the jobs offshore years ago.

The general trend though has been for these companies to send middle-skill positions to countries that pay lower wages and most likely these jobs are not returning any time soon.

This situation has been exacerbated by the global recession so if you’re in the market for a new job you might find yourself competing with more people for a fewer number of jobs as many people have already discovered. The difference is that the jobs that were lost aren’t necessarily coming back once the economy picks up.

Over the past 2 years or so as the global economy melted down, some companies and industries were certainly hurt much more than others. According to a recent Fortune article I read online, the 15 companies that shed the biggest number of jobs were not surprising, companies like Citibank, TimeWarner, GM and AIG.

But the list also included some (perhaps) surprising ones like Starbucks. Mind you, when you read the article and learn than they closed 800 stores in the US alone, you can start to see where the job losses came from. Perhaps people aren’t drinking as much expensive coffee as they used to when times were better?

After reading the article, it reminded me about a post I’d written a few months back where people try to chase the “hot” jobs or industries. You see the lists on the Net all the time. The “10 hottest jobs,” “10 high paying industries” and stuff like that. When you chase the jobs that are “hot” today by the time you catch up it may no longer be hot.

Plus when you see a fairly diverse list of employers shedding huge numbers of jobs like the Fortune article shows, it’s clear that sometimes the hurt goes around and affects everyone and not just a short select list of companies or industries.

Click here to see the article in full and see the extent of the job losses by company.

While listening to the radio this morning, I heard a business columnist commenting on possible job and hiring trends for 2010 and he suggested the following:

Replacing low performing workers: Companies often attempt to do this on an ongoing basis anyways but with 2010 expected by many people to at least be better than 2009 and at best mark noticeable improvements economically, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that companies will take a look at people who are possibly better than employees that they have currently. Certainly, people who work in a sales environment are just one example of where poor performers might be replaced by new staff who have a track record of high performance elsewhere and would be expected to outperform the incumbent.

Flexible work environments: This has been a trend already but many companies who don’t currently offer this sort of arrangement might look at offering this in the near future. Flexible work arrangements can mean various things such as:

1. Reducing the work week from 5 days to 4 days (ie. staff stay an extra 2 hours each day from Monday-Thursday and get Fridays off)

2. Reduced hours for staff to save the company money

3. Work-from-home arrangements on a part-time (ie. several times per week) or fulltime.

Having staff working from home or having a home office-type system might mean that a company can save significant money by reducing the number of offices they own/lease and operate by having staff work from home rather than in an office whose costs are borne by the company.

Rehiring laid off workers: Certainly many in the auto industry are expecting/hoping that they’ll fall into this category if they were laid off in the latter half of 2008 or sometime in 2009. In other industries rehiring staff who were laid off temporarily might be something that companies are able to do as they see their business turning around and see business starting to pick up.

An interesting dilemma in this case is occurring right now with the General Motors-owned automobile manufacturer Saab who GM is trying to sell. Saab was close to being sold to another company but when the sale fell through, GM decided to scrap the brand. Instead, GM is now negotiating to sell Saab to another company and instead of thinking about shutting the company down, Saab is also apparently planning on picking up production again since they have orders to fill.

When I was in university, I worked for a company that was rumored to be close to having a fairly sizeable downsizing in their office area. I worked part time in an area that was not going to be affected but the rumors were floating around as to who was getting chopped and how big the cut was going to be.

Finally, the day came and we started seeing people leaving the building during the day with their belongings boxed up so we knew that the layoffs had begun. I was sitting in the lunch room at the time and a few tables away was one of the loudmouths who worked in the office that was experiencing the layoffs. Someone made a comment about how the layoffs were unfortunate and the loudmouth commented that it wasn’t so bad because the company was getting rid of the “dead wood” in his words.

Shortly after lunch, the loudmouth found out that he was amongst the dead wood, as he was let go. The rumor was that he responded by barricading himself in his office and shredding as much paper as possible before he was escorted from the building for the last time.

In this instance, the moral of the story is to understand your value in the company.

While we can’t predict this 100% and in this economy, even productive people can be laid off, your best bet is to show value to the company and where possible make it obvious to others how you either add revenue to the company, help the company decrease costs or ideally, how you do both.

The funny part is that the loudmouth didn’t have a particularly good reputation certainly amongst the people I worked with, so he clearly had an overinflated opinion of himself.