Latest news with #costsaving
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
‘Respect the Rotisserie Chicken'
'Respect the rotisserie chicken.' A reader wrote to me last week with that gem of a sentence, and I want to put it on hats and tote bags. I'd asked you all for your cost-saving strategies in these dizzyingly expensive times. You replied en masse, with fascinating emails that detailed your grocery-shopping and cooking habits and shared a glimpse into your lives, whether you're in Alaska or Australia (both represented) or, most likely, somewhere in between. My colleagues Allison Jiang and Sharon Attia pulled your tips into this article, which is full of excellent advice. Take a look, leave comments, tell us more. Some of you are buying in bulk and going to the store less often. But — counterintuitively! I like it! — some of you are doing the exact opposite, shopping more often and buying less in each go. That way, you buy only what you need in that moment and avoid food waste from ignored groceries — the most expensive choice of all. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Trump and Musk try to smooth over a threatened rift
After gutting federal agencies, stirring up a flurry of lawsuits and falling far short of his cost-saving goals, Elon Musk returned to the White House on Friday to say goodbye in person, a ceremonial ending to the 130 days that the world's richest man spent as a special government employee.
The Sun
7 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Three savvy tips to dial down the cost of your next smart phone purchase
MOBILE phones are one gadget that most of us struggle to do without. But although they may be smart, they can also be very expensive. 7 Here are some ways to dial down the costs . . . SIM-ONLY: You can often save cash by buying a phone outright and opting for a cheap rolling SIM-only contract. This is much cheaper than signing up for a deal incorporating the cost of a handset. Use a comparison site such as to look for the best SIM-only deals based on how much data you need each month. Don't buy a plan with more data than you need. You can easily find out how much data you use under the settings on your phone. Often the best deals are away from the big, well-known brands EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. If you travel often it can be worth looking at a smaller provider which offers free roaming within the EU — many of the big networks now charge for this. BUY REFURBISHED: Rather than opting for a new handset, try a second-hand or refurbished phone professionally fixed up to meet set standards. Phone makers including Apple offer refurbished models, as do networks such as O2 and Giffgaff. Handsets are graded by visible wear and tear. Easy ways to slash your mobile bill You will pay most for a model that looks pristine but you can save even more if you don't mind a few scratches on the device. KNOW YOUR NETWORK: Once you have settled with a provider, make the most of any perks that come with being a customer. Cheap coffee, discounted cinema tickets, free subscriptions and early access to concert booking are just some of the benefits you can get through mobile firms. When your contract is up, try haggling down costs rather than staying put. Many providers will happily discount your costs rather than see you walk out the door All prices on page correct at time of going to press. Deals and offers subject to availability. DEAL OF THE DAY ADD some stylish mood lighting to your home with this arc lamp, down from £140 to £93.32 at Habitat. CHEAP TREAT 7 CHEER up an outfit with this pink Ibiza cap, £7 from George at Asda. What's new? GINSTERS has launched ready to eat pastries Pockets, with flavours including salt & pepper chicken, smoky BBQ beef, sriracha chicken and butter chicken, £1 each from Morrisons. TOP SWAP STAY cool at night with the quiet Dyson Cool tower fan, £290 from Argos. Or head to Lidl this weekend and pick up the bladeless fan, £69.99 – or £54.99 for Lidl Plus members. GIVE your skin a glow up with Revolution Be Bright four-step routine bundle, down from £14.95 to £11.96 at SAVE: £2.99 PLAY NOW TO WIN £200 7 JOIN thousands of readers taking part in The Sun Raffle. Every month we're giving away £100 to 250 lucky readers - whether you're saving up or just in need of some extra cash, The Sun could have you covered. Every Sun Savers code entered equals one Raffle ticket.
RNZ News
27-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
How many public sector jobs have really been axed?
Photo: RNZ Explainer - Thousands of public jobs have been axed as part of the government's cost saving exercise. But as Lauren Crimp reports, it's not easy finding consensus on the right way to count the cuts. When the coalition government came to power in 2023, it set out to slash public spending , pledging to "move resources out of bureaucracy and into the front line". As a result, jobs across the public sector were on the chopping block. Of course, economic pain was also being felt in the private sector, where jobs were also being culled . The coalition's cuts followed a 34 percent growth in the public service between 2017 and 2024, much of which was under the Labour government. The moves were slammed by the opposition and unions, but Finance Minister and then Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said the public had not got bang for buck under the former government. From April 2024 to the end of the year, RNZ kept careful count of jobs lost as belts were tightened, using information provided by the organisations themselves to understand the scale of the changes. And in October RNZ asked every ministry, department, Crown entity, Crown agent, departmental agency and Crown research institute (113 in total) whether they had made cuts in response to the government's cost-saving initiative - 56 had. The process involved clarifying with organisations things like whether job loss numbers they provided were net or gross, to ensure we were consistent in our approach. Earlier this month TVNZ's Q + A host Jack Tame put RNZ's count - around 9500 - to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche. "I'm not sure it's the correct number actually, because I'm told it's 2000," Roche said. Willis expressed a similar sentiment , saying the media - including RNZ - had reported incorrect numbers. Finance Minister Nicola Willis says media - including RNZ - reported incorrect numbers. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The Public Service Commission supports the government to implement policies and deliver services, and collates workforce data. Its figures showed between December 2023 and December 2024 there were 2731 fewer full-time equivalent (FTE) staff. RNZ's count reached 9520 by the end of December 2024. That is the net number - taking into account that while organisations disestablished roles, some also created new ones as they reshuffled their workforce. Read RNZ's detailed reporting of public sector job cuts . The Commission's numbers do not include vacancies, nor jobs gone at every single Crown organisation, because they do not fall under its jurisdiction. RNZ included both in its tally. "This might explain the discrepancy between our number and the much larger number some media have been using," a spokesperson for the Commission said. RNZ included jobs lost at Crown entities in its count - as well as those in the core public service - to show the breadth of agencies affected by the government's savings initiative. Crown entities are responsible for a range of public services and while they're part of government and owned by the Crown, they're run by independent boards. They include big employers like Health NZ, Kāinga Ora, Police and the Defence Force, as well as smaller entities such as AgResearch, GNS and Niwa. The head of Victoria University's School of Government, Karl Lofgren said RNZ's tally of jobs lost was "as good as any". "I'm a bit confused why the current government is surprised by your numbers." It was difficult to assess the size of the wider public sector (Crown entities as well as the core public service) because solid workforce data only existed for the core public service, he said. Another school of government professor and senior fellow at Motu Research, Arthur Grimes said job loss counts would differ depending on what was being measured. "It's legitimate to include Crown entities along with the core public service, if that's what you're trying to measure. If you're only trying to measure core public service, obviously you wouldn't," he said. "But if the question is jobs lost from entities, core public sector or otherwise, that are funded by the state sector, then I think adding them [Crown entities] in makes sense." Victoria University's School of Government professor and senior fellow at Motu Research Arthur Grimes. Photo: Supplied Lofgren agreed - "I find it a bit difficult to understand why that should be excluded" - as did associate professor at the university's school of management, Geoff Plimmer. "When people think about cuts to public servants, they don't draw a distinction between Crown agencies and ... core Wellington-based government departments," he said. "People will want to know how many people have lost their jobs, and whether they meet the fine-grain distinction in the Public Finance Act between a core government department and a Crown agency or a Crown entity is by the by." But there is some disagreement over the issue of vacant jobs. RNZ decided to include vacancies because they represented jobs that once existed, but no longer do because of the belt tightening. Victoria University school of management senior lecturer Stephen Blumenfeld said it was legitimate to count vacant jobs, but it was impossible to know whether someone would have ever been hired into those positions. "There's an assumption being made that the position is vacant but it's intended to be refilled at some time in the future, whether or not that's the case," he said. "If they're intending to fill the job, I think it is fair to call that a job that is not filled. But the question is, really, how many of those jobs would have been filled otherwise?" Victoria University's School of Management associate professor Geoff Plimmer. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King But Plimmer said vacant jobs should not have been included in the tally of those lost. Some went unfilled for a long time and were not intended to be filled, he said. "They're very much just paper abstracts, they don't really exist until someone is in the job, doing the job." Agencies might hold vacancies without filling them to attract budget funding, said Plimmer. But for the most part it was simply a nuisance to get rid of vacant jobs and keeping them gave organisations flexibility, he said. RNZ has now tallied up a best estimate of what our count might have been if we had matched the Public Service Commission and counted jobs lost only in the core public service, not including vacancies. Let's break it down a bit. RNZ's count of jobs lost in the public service alone, including vacancies, was 5247. It gets tricky to subtract vacancies from that, because not all organisations made the distinction between vacant and filled roles. When organisations specified how many of the disestablished positions were vacant, RNZ sought to report that. Our best estimate, from the organisations that did provide that information, was that 1090 vacant jobs were cut. Taking that number off the 5247 jobs lost in the public service gets us to 4157 - a little closer to the Public Service Commission's 2731, but with the caveats noted. And some of those that didn't confirm vacancy numbers had reported pretty big cuts - for example, the Ministry of Social Development which slashed about 900 jobs and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which downsized by about 400 roles. And it's worth noting that in some cases, vacancies made up a big portion of roles gone: for example, the Department of Conservation had a net loss of 124 jobs, by disestablishing 257 permanent positions (of which 114 were vacant) and creating 133 new ones. Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Grimes said it was vital that any count of job loss numbers were put into context, including significant growth in the public service. "Otherwise you get a very distorted picture of job losses if you're only looking at it over a very short-term period," he said. "I think it's very misleading to just look at the short-term figure." The public service - not including Crown entities - grew 34 percent between June 2017 and June 2024, Public Service Commission workforce statistics showed. It had been increasing about 5 percent a year until 2022, but in the year from June 2023 it rose 0.7 percent. At the end of June 2024, there were 63,537 full-time equivalent staff - up slightly on a year prior, but down from 65,699 in December 2023. At the end of December 2024, there were 62,968 full-time equivalent staff - down 0.9 percent since June 2024, and down 4.2 percent since December 2023. RNZ laid out the differences between its numbers and the Public Service Commission's, and asked Willis whether she stood by her comments that RNZ had been incorrectly reporting job losses. "Minister Willis stands by her past comments that RNZ's job tallies were wrong and completely inaccurate," a spokesperson from her office said. They said other questions, about whether including Crown entities and vacancies better reflected the number of public jobs lost, should be addressed to Public Service Minister Judith Collins. Collins said RNZ was conflating job losses in the public service with those that have occurred in the wider public sector, which are accountable to their boards. "The job losses that occurred in the public service were the result of the Government's Fiscal Savings Programme where departments were asked to find savings of 6.5 - 7.5 percent. "Additional job losses have occurred in both the public service and the wider public sector for a variety of reasons, but these weren't subject to the Fiscal Savings Programme and are not included in how job losses were calculated and communicated." They did not count vacancies being disestablished as job losses, Collins said. "These were vacant roles, so no one lost a job as a result." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Daily Mail
27-05-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Volvo to slash 15% of its workforce
Published: | Volvo will cut 3,000 jobs as it battles against the slowdown of electric vehicle sales across the globe. The Swedish car giant revealed this morning 15 percent of its office workforce will be impacted, with the majority of those hitting white-collar jobs in the Scandinavian country. It forms part of a £1.4bn cost-saving strategy Volvo announced earlier this month in order to 'offset external headwinds' caused by the decline in EV sales, high costs and global trade uncertainty. Calling Monday's actions 'difficult decisions' made to 'build a stronger and more resilient Volvo,' Hakan Samuelsson, chief executive, said: 'The automotive industry is in the middle of a challenging period. 'To address this, we must improve our cash flow generation and structurally lower our costs. At the same time, we will continue to ensure the development of the talent we need for our ambitious future.' Owned by China's Geely Holding Group with production in both China and Europe, Volvo has been highly exposed to the 25 percent tariffs introduced in the US by President Trump on imported cars. Volvo confirmed its annual electric car sales plummet 11 percent in April, with sales of its electrified models – fully electric and plug-in hybrids – falling 16 percent compared to the same period last year. Volvo has its main headquarters and product development offices in Gothenburg, Sweden, and makes cars and SUVs in Belgium, South Carolina and China. As of 2024, Volvo employs roughly 44,000 employees globally, with nearly 20,000 being 'white-collar' workers. Telling Reuters that cuts are 'everywhere' and 'considerable' Samuelsson confirmed: 'It's white-collar in almost all areas, including R&D, communication, human resources. 'I think it will be very healthy, and will save us money and give space for people to (take on) bigger responsibilities.' Samuelsson was reappointed as chief executive on 30 March after the end of Scotsman Jim Rowan's three-year tenure following a rocky period of EV sales. Volvo is one of the car makers to have invested most in the EV transition, as it was one of the first to offer an electrified version of every model in its range. In 2021, Volvo said all of its cars would go electric by 2030, before U-turning on that last year after admitting it needed to scale back the ambitious deadline due to a number of issues including 'additional uncertainties created by recent tariffs on EVs in various markets'. In its latest sales report from April, Volvo confirmed that its share of fully electric cars constituted 20 percent of all cars sold for the month while the share of plug-in hybrid models accounted for 25 percent. Fully electric sales were down 32 percent from April 2024. While poor EV uptake has hit Volvo just like many other manufacturers, Samuelsson said it could become impossible to import the smallest cars in the company's line-up to the US due to the new tariffs. On Friday Donald Trump said he was recommending a straight 50 percent tariff on goods from the European Union starting June 1, saying the EU has been hard to deal with on trade. Samuelsson told Reuters a 50 percent tariff would limit the ability of Volvo to sell its Belgium-made EX30 electric vehicle in the US and customers would have to pay a large part of the tariff-related cost increases.
