The skies are a little darker over Chicago today as Motorola Mobility is trimming its staff by 500 positions, or 25 percent of its workforce. Parent company Lenovo is restructuring and reported to be cutting jobs in other locations as well.  Given phone sales are down 31 percent as compared to one year ago, it stands to reason that Lenovo would want to stem bleeding as soon as possible.
The Chicago site is Motorola’s largest facility in terms of head count. But, as much as this one stings, it sounds like it could hurt even more in other parts of the world.
[blockquote author=”Motorola spokesman Will Moss”]It’s across all functions, affecting all departments. Chicago is not as badly impacted as some of our other sites.[/blockquote]
Motorola only recently moved to its Chicago location and takes up four floors of the Merchandise Mart building. Looking ahead, it’s unclear whether they’ll continue to occupy the entire space or whether it will look to sell unused areas.
[blockquote author=””]There’s nothing specific we can announce. The Merchandise Mart continues to be our headquarters and will still be the hub for global R&D and home for our labs. We’ll continue to be there.[/blockquote]
If there is a bright side to the situation, a majority of Motorola’s staff is comprised of engineers and technical workers. As such, we might hope for those losing jobs to quickly find work with other companies.
