Further Nielsen Cuts Shrink Columbia Office

Following news earlier in the week of job cuts in Florida, Nielsen is reportedly to close its call center operations in Columbia, Maryland, with the loss of 325 jobs; and in Radcliff, Kentucky, shedding 237.|

According to the Baltimore Business Journal, the move will leave about 100 employees at Nielsen Audio's Columbia office, previously the headquarters of Arbitron. The radio ratings giant moved its corporate headquarters to the Maryland location to join its research and engineering operations in March 2009, and at the time of the merger announcement in December 2012 was thought to have around 640 full-time and 220 part-time workers based in the Columbia complex of offices. An earlier round of redundancies at Columbia, six months ago, had already reduced headcount by more than 330.

Nielsen, which made no secret of the potential synergies / economies from the merger from the off, and quickly began making cuts, disclosed the latest job cuts on Thursday in a filing with the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. The scheduled closure date is August 31st. Nielsen announced earlier this week that it was closing the Sarasota, Florida call center of its former JV with Arbitron, Scarborough Research, making 220 employees redundant by the end of September.

The company's statement says: 'As part of the integration of Nielsen Audio, Nielsen has implemented changes across the company to enhance growth and to align our resources to meet and exceed client needs. These changes will improve productivity and innovation for the benefit of our clients and our organization.'

Nielsen's US headquarters are in New York, where Arbitron also retained offices after moving its own HQ from there to Maryland.

Home page: www.nielsen.com .