THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 4, 1996 TAG: 9609040553
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 39 lines
After adding more than a thousand jobs in late 1995, Virginia's banks and thrifts shed 3,704 employees during January, February and March due to cost-cutting efforts and mergers, a financial research company said Tuesday.
Bank employment in the state declined 9 percent to 37,010 at the end of March from 40,714 last Dec. 31, said Paul Bauer, president of Bauer Financial Reports Inc. in Coral Gables, Fla.
``In Virginia, it seemed to be the loss of one job here and a loss of three jobs there,'' Bauer said.
However, while the number of jobs at Roanoke-based First Union National Bank declined 332 during the first quarter to 3,977, Bauer said, that figure was still ahead of the 3,747 that First Union employed in Virginia at the end of March 1995.
And while banking employment declined during the first quarter in Virginia and several other states, banks in North Carolina and Rhode Island added jobs. That was due largely to the presence of expansion-minded companies like NationsBank Corp. and First Union Corp. in Charlotte, and Fleet Financial Group Inc. in Providence, R.I., Bauer said.
NationsBank has been consolidating certain jobs from its Virginia operations into its Charlotte headquarters. The largest bank in Hampton Roads, NationsBank has more than 2,000 employees in the region, including more than a thousand at its credit-card processing center in Norfolk.
Last Friday, it announced an agreement to acquire Boatmen's Bancshares Inc., a St. Louis banking company operating in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and other parts of the Midwest.
Throughout the country, the number of banking jobs fell 27,265 during the January-through-March quarter to 1.71 million, Bauer Financial Reports said. ``We were surprised by the magnitude of these losses after four previous quarters when banks had been adding jobs,'' Bauer said.
The research company drew its data from quarterly employment reports that banks and thrifts had filed with federal regulators. by CNB