In the flurry of productivity aimed at combating the Coronavirus outbreak, Minnesota-based multinational conglomerate 3M ($MMM) has emerged as a leader in American industry with goals to develop a billion masks to help protect doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.
It revealed plans to double production of N95 masks, deemed critical by health and safety professionals for limiting Coronavirus' contagiousness.
However, even with those plans to double production, 3M's hiring is scaling down, and not up - and from its January 2020 peak, the company has slashed nearly 80% of jobs.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, 3M began working on a production plan for the masks in late January 2020, seeing the early impacts of the Coronavirus' spread in China.
It's not unlike other US industry leaders with enormous assembly lines that - despite their commitment to battle the Coronavirus epidemic by making ventilators, testing drugs or creatings masks and gowns for medical personnel - still face the grim reality that they need far fewer staff as other operations have been substantially curtailed, or stopped completely.
So far this year, shares are down 26%. 3M is expected to announce earnings for the first quarter on April 23.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
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