Wednesday, May 6, 2009
April’s Job Loss Report Less of a Train Wreck Than March’s
The number of job cuts made during April was the lowest since October. That’s the latest from outplacement services provider Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which said today that “planned workforce reductions” in April were 132,590–12 percent fewer than the more than 150,000 recorded in March. Great news, right? Until you realize that the “planned reductions” to which the company refers were up 47 percent from a year earlier and are still at recession levels.
With IBM quietly contributing another 2,800 or so employees to the next Bureau of Labor Statistics Unemployment report, this seems like a fine time to pay respects to those who’ve gone before them. And there are many. In the past six months, thousands of workers have been right-sized and offboarded. Rebalanced and rationalized. “Smartsized.” Sacked. A quick scan of the carnage.
