Tech Job Cuts Upgraded to "Appalling" from "Gruesome"

John Paczkowski — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:30:01 +0000

The first three months of 2009 were brutal ones for the high-tech industry–from a job loss perspective, the worst in seven years. Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Monday said high-tech companies sacked some 84,217 employees in the first quarter, a 27 percent increase over the previous quarter and the steepest reduction the firm has seen since the Great Dark Time of 2002. It’s also nearly five times the 17,345 jobs lost in the same period a year ago. (Click on table below to enlarge.)

An ugly metric, and one that’s likely to grow worse in coming months. Challenger says job cuts have risen five straight quarters. What’s to stop them rising for a sixth? No idea.

“Unfortunately, no industry appears to be immune in this recession,” CEO John Challenger said in a statement. “Even the health care sector, which has consistently added jobs throughout the downturn, is starting to see those gains shrink.” That said, the firm doesn’t see things getting as grim as they did in the 2001 recession. At that time employers announced an average of 145,467 total job cuts each quarter. With only 84,217 cuts announced in the most recent quarter, we’ve still got quite a way to go before we hit that number. Course, we’re also off to a great start…

What Color Is Happened to Your Parachute?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:10:42 +0000

Looking over the latest unemployment figures, Silicon Valley’s technology bust early this decade no longer seems such a distant memory. In another unsettling economic sign, the unemployment rate in Silicon Valley rose for the fourth consecutive month in August to reach a four-year high. Unemployment in Silicon Valley reached 6.5 percent last month, up from a revised 6.4 percent in July and 6.0 percent in June, according to the latest data from the California Employment Development Department.

The last time the unemployment rate was this high was in July 2004, following the dotcom bust. Seems even the high-tech world is becoming more fiscally cautious as the economy crumbles around us. We’ve seen layoffs at Yahoo (YHOO), Motorola (MOT), Applied Materials (AMAT), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Sun (JAVA), Nortel (NT) … even Google (GOOG), which announced the first major cuts in its 10-year history.

What was it Mark Twain once said? “By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again and again–and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s, and each obeying its own law.”

Digital Daily » high-tech

Tech Job Cuts Upgraded to "Appalling" from "Gruesome"

What Color Is Happened to Your Parachute?