Daily Business Report — Dec. 10, 2009
Employers Expected to Hire at Moderate Pace Next Quarter
Area employers expect to hire at a moderate pace during the first quarter of 2010, according to the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. From January to March, 14 percent of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, while 12 percent expect to reduce their payrolls, said Manpower spokesperson Phil Blair. Another 71 percent expect to maintain their current staff levels and 3 percent are not certain of their hiring plans.
“Compared with the previous quarter when 9 percent of companies interviewed intended to add employees, and 17 percent planned to reduce staff levels, area hiring levels appear to be significantly stronger,” said Blair. “Employers are much more optimistic about hiring activity as compared to one year ago, when 10 percent of companies surveyed planned to increase staff levels and 20 percent expected to cut payrolls.”
For the coming quarter, job prospects appear best in Nondurable Goods Manufacturing, Wholesale & Retail Trade, Information, Professional & Business Services and Government.
Employers in Construction, Transportation & Utilities, Financial Activities, Education & Health Services and Leisure & Hospitality plan to reduce staffing levels, while hiring in Durable Goods Manufacturing and Other Services is expected to remain unchanged.
Of the more than 28,000 employers surveyed in the U.S., 12 percent expect to increase their staff levels during the January-March period, while 12 percent expect to reduce their payrolls. Seventy-three percent expect no change in hiring, and 3 percent are undecided about their Quarter 1 2010 hiring plans.
The next Manpower Employment Outlook Survey will be released on March 9, 2010 to report hiring expectations for the second quarter of 2010.
Fisher & Phillips Law Firm to Relocate
Fisher & Phillips LLP, a national labor and employment law firm, will relocate its San Diego office on Dec. 18 to 4747 Executive Drive, Suite 1000, in San Diego (92121). The firm’s phone and fax number will not change. The phone number remains as (858) 597-9600 and the Website is laborlawyers.com. San Diego managing partner Chris Hoffman said the move is in response to the office’s growth in 2009, including the addition of two new partners joining the firm, Regina Petty and Brandy Thompson Cody.
Before joining Fisher & Phillips, Cody was a partner with Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger LLP in San Diego, where she has practiced since 2001. She graduated from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1998 and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1995 from USD. Petty is a former partner at Wilson Petty Kosmo and Turner and past president of the San Diego County Bar Association.
Adriana Cara Joins Brown Law Group
Brown Law Group, a San Diego business litigation law firm, announced that Adriana Cara has joined the firm. Cara’s practice focuses on labor and employment law as well as advising management on federal and state employment law compliance. Prior to joining the firm, Cara practiced at Fine, Boggs & Perkins LLP, Procopio, and Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo. Cara is a member of The Honorable Fiorenzo V. Lopardo American Inns of Court, the San Diego County Bar Association and the California State Bar Labor & Employment Law Section.
J Public Relations Hires PR Manager and Promotes Clifford
Katherine Randall has been hired as public relations manager at J Public Relations in San Diego and Lauren Clifford has been promoted to account supervisor. The agency specializes in travel, nightlife, restaurant and lifestyle public relations. Randall has more than eight years of agency, in-house, and start-up experience in strategic positioning and branding for companies across the lifestyle industry. Clifford’s role within the agency will expand to include enhanced strategic leadership and management functions, including mentorship for JPR’s publicist. In her day-to-day client work, her focus remains on JPR’s nightlife clients such as Fluxx, Side Bar, W Hotel San Diego, Voyeur, and Eclipse at Harrah’s Rincon Casino & Resort. Clifford has been with JPR for nearly three years.
SDSU Receives Record Undergraduate Applications
San Diego State University has received a record 61,632 undergraduate applications for the fall 2010 semester — an increase of 10 percent compared to 55,578 for fall 2009. The priority application period closed Nov. 30. From the 61,632 who applied, the university expects to enroll 5,991 new undergraduates, including 3,380 first-time freshman and 2,611 transfer students. This is the most undergraduate applications SDSU has ever received during the priority application period, breaking the previous record of 61,576 for the fall 2008 semester. That year, SDSU was ranked second in the nation for the most undergraduate applications among four-year public universities. Cuts to the state budget have required the California State University system to reduce enrollment system-wide by 40,000 students to meet available funding. SDSU, which reduced enrollment by 1,850 students this fall, will eliminate an additional 2,750 enrollment spaces in 2010.
SDSU received 17,088 undergraduate transfer student applications, including 4,785 from local transfer students. It is likely that virtually all of the transfer students accepted will be from SDSU’s local service area.Last year, SDSU received 13,968 undergraduate transfer applications.
Qualcomm Co-Founder to be honored
Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm Inc. and developer of wireless technologies that became the international standard for third-generation cell phones, has been named the 2010 Medal of Honor recipient from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE). The Medal of Honor, IEEE’s highest award, will be presented June 26, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as part of IEEE’s annual Honors Ceremony. Viterbi, who received the National Medal of Science in 2008 (administered by the National Science Foundation and presented by the President of the United States), is being recognized for “seminal contributions to communications technology and theory.” In the mid-1960s, while a professor at UCLA, he developed the Viterbi Algorithm, a breakthrough in wireless technology that separated information (voice and data) from background noise. All four international standards for third-generation digital cellular communications as well as most digital satellite communications systems use the Viterbi Algorithm. In 1985, Viterbi co-founded Qualcomm with Irwin Jacobs and helped develop Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology, which applied spread spectrum to cellular phones.
Viejas Helps Alpine Students in Math and Music
Students at schools in Alpine are benefiting from an innovative program that improves math and music skills, largely because of proceeds from concerts and other events held at Viejas Casino and Outlet Center in Alpine, according to the Viejas tribe. Earlier this year, hundreds of K-8 students at Alpine’s three elementary schools began using a new program called ST Math + Music, a research-based program designed to improve math and music skills. The program is based on brain research and was developed by the California-based nonprofit MIND Research Institute. Viejas dedicated a portion of proceeds from the 2009 concert season ticket sales, as well as proceeds from food sales at its annual state barbeque championship event to purchase the music and math software, as well as some classroom music keyboards, for the school district.
“It’s amazing that we are able to launch a program like this in such a challenging economic period,” said Alpine Superintendent Greg Ryan. “But this demonstrates the community spirit and the commitment to education that we all share in Alpine.” Viejas Tribal Chairman Bobby Barrett said, “Times are tough for everyone right now, and schools are forced to make significant budget cuts. But this partnership between Viejas and Alpine shows what can be done when the community comes together, gets creative and is determined to overcome obstacles and help our children.”
Dick Enberg to be Inducted into Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame
San Diego Padres television play-by-play announcer Dick Enberg will be inducted next week into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. The third annual celebration will take place Dec. 15 at the New York Hilton and will be hosted by CBS Sports lead play-by-play announcer, Jim Nantz. Enberg is expected to join the Padres in spring training in February and will call action for the majority of regular-season games on Cox-owned Channel 4 San Diego while continuing his tennis coverage of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.
How Much Information Do You Consume in a Year?
U.S. households consumed about 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008, according to the “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers,” released by UCSD. One zettabyte is 1,000,000,000 trillion bytes, and total bytes consumed last year were the equivalent of the information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska.
The How Much Information? project is creating a census of the world’s information in 2008. The study measured information consumed by U.S. consumers in and outside the home for non-work related reasons, and included the gamut of information sources, including going to the movies, listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and reading the newspaper, among other things.
“This report is a snapshot of what the information revolution means to the average American on an average day, who consumes 34 gigabytes and 100,000 words of information,” said report author Roger Bohn, director of the Global Information Industry Center at UCSD’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. “The total volume of 3.6 zettabytes consumed last year is much larger than previous studies have reported, partly because they measured different views of information, such as information creation rather than consumption. Also, nobody had looked at the role of computer games, which generate a staggering number of bytes.”
The new report estimates that between 1980 and 2008, bytes consumed increased 350 percent, for an average annual growth rate of 5.4 percent. According to the report, the average American’s information consumption of 34 gigabytes a day is the equivalent of about one fifth of a notebook computer’s hard drive, depending on the model.
Hourly statistics confirm that a large chunk of the average American’s day is spent watching television. The new report estimates that on average 41 percent of information time is watching TV (including DVDs, recorded TV and real-time watching). American consumers watched 36 million hours of television on mobile devices each month – a number that, while expected to grow, is a fraction of the hours spent watching television at home.
Based on bytes alone, however, computer games are the biggest information source totaling 18.5 gigabytes per day for the average American consumer, or about 67 percent of all bytes consumed. About 80 percent of the population plays some kind of computer game, including casual games such as Bookworm, Tetris and social networking games.
According to the study, the 3.6 zettabytes of total information used by Americans in their homes far exceeds storage or transmission capacity. For example, the total is roughly 20 times more than what can be stored at one time on all the hard drives in the world. Less than two percent of the total information was transmitted over the Internet.
The report, “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers,” is available online and can be downloaded in PDF format at
http://hmi.ucsd.edu/howmuchinfo.php.
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