School District Cuts Jobs In Chicago

[Cheezhead]

Aside from causing direct layoffs, the recession is having other negative effects on the economy. With so many people unemployed, the government is taking in fewer taxes. This, of course, means that the budget deficit in many areas in growing. Because of this approximately 1,000 Chicago jobs are scheduled to be cut.

Officials for the Chicago Public School system recently announced that they will be doing away with a total of 1,000 jobs in the near future, in order to make ends meet. Of these positions 500 employees will lose their jobs in the next few weeks. The other 500 jobs in Chicago will be cut during the course of the next year.

According to the school system’s spokesperson Monique Bond, the layoffs will not affect the city’s classrooms. Instead the positions will cut from management and administrative staff. Currently there are somewhere around 5,300 employees working for the school system in this regard.

A recent report from the Chicago Tribune said that the school district’s deficit is currently estimated to be somewhere between $475 million and $600 million. By cutting these positions at least $100 million will be saved. Where the remainder of the money needed to fill this gap will come from is still unknown at this time.

The district’s CEO Ron Huberman has created a team to oversee these changes. According to the Chicago Sun Times, the members come from a variety of different areas of the government. Several members are from the Chicago Transit Authority, two from the police department and three are part of Mayor Richard Daley’s staff.

Over the course of the last 12 months ending in April the government sector in Chicago has shrunk by 0.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In April the Bureau says that 9.9 percent of the city’s workforce was unemployed. During the same month the national jobless rate was 8.9 percent.