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.
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.
Stupefying.
