Over the course of the last year, financial jobs in the Chicago area (click here for more information) have become more difficult to find. With the industry suffering from several issues, employers have had to make cut backs in order to stay afloat. Now another company in the industry has announced that it will be cutting positions near the city.
Discover Financial Services recently informed workers that it will be doing away 500 jobs over the next month. In order to help the company make it through the recession, officials have decided that cutting approximately 4 percent of its workforce is necessary.
Instead of laying off workers in only one section, Discover has decided that the best plan of action is to do away with workers in all departments. Despite this, the majority of the positions will be lost in Riverwoods, Illinois, which is located right outside Chicago.
“We have taken prudent steps to reduce expenses and boost efficiencies, while continuing to provide the leading products and customer service that have long distinguished Discover,” said Discover’s Chairman and Chief Executive David Nelm in a recent statement. “However, rising charge-offs, decreases in consumer spending, and the instability of the credit card securitization markets are affecting the entire industry”
Currently Discover has less than 3,000 workers in Riverwood and a total of 12,000 employees in seven different states.
This is the first move Discover had made in order to make it through these tough economic times. Over the last few months, the company has done what it could to gather capital in order to make the rising loan losses easier to manage.
With unemployment rising across the nation, many workers are having trouble paying their debts to such companies as Discover. Instead, many are filing bankruptcy and taking other measures to make their own finances more manageable. This leaves credit companies holding the bill and scrambling to recover their losses.