Housing `Hangover' Kills Jobs as Spending Wanes; More Cuts Loom (Kathleen M. Howley)

  ``Appliance manufacturers and other suppliers are already feeling the heat, but they may not feel the full impact until the end of 2007.''

  Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Denise Hamilton was earning the biggest salary of her life painting and packing refrigerator parts until Collis Inc. decided to shut its Evansville, Indiana, factory and she was fired.

  Hamilton, 36, lost her $11.20-per-hour job last month because Collis's main customer, Whirlpool Corp., the world's largest appliance maker, cut production after a drop in home sales reduced demand for new refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers. Whirlpool fired 500 workers at its Evansville plant and Collis fired 160, including Hamilton.

  ``Working for Collis was the best job of my life,'' said Hamilton, a mother of two who lives on the outskirts of Evansville. ``Money is going to be tight.''

  New and existing home sales dropped almost 10 percent last year, depressing demand for products from copper pipes to kitchen sinks and resulting in the loss of about 100,000 jobs in the U.S. Housing-related unemployment probably will increase in 2007, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Even if the housing market improves in the second half of 2007, as the National Association of Realtors predicts, sales of furniture and construction supplies will stagnate, said Amal Bendimerad, a research analyst at the Harvard center. Housing and related industries account for about 23 percent of the economy, according to the center.

  ``Appliance manufacturers and other suppliers are already feeling the heat, but they may not feel the full impact until the end of 2007,'' Bendimerad said. ``There's typically a lag of as much as a year.''

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