PLANNED JOB CUTS DROP TO 10-YEAR LOW OF 34,768
CHICAGO, September 1, 2010 – While the pace of job creation continues to disappoint, job security appears to be stronger than ever. The latest report on downsizing activity reveals that planned job cuts announced by employers in August fell to 34,768, the lowest monthly total in over a decade.
August job cuts were down 17 percent from the 41,676 cuts announced in July, according to the report released Wednesday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. This marks the first decline following three consecutive months of increases. August not only replaces April as the lowest job-cut month of the year, it represents the lowest job-cut month since June 2000, when employers announced only 17,241 planned layoffs.
Job cuts last month were 55 percent below the 76,456 planned cuts announced in August 2009. So far in 2010, monthly totals are, on average, 62 percent lower than the year-ago figure. Overall, the 374,121 job cuts through August are down 65 percent from the 1,070,504 layoffs announced by this point in 2009.
“Every other job-market indicator seems to be stuck in first gear. In contrast, the layoff picture has improved so significantly that we are at pre-dot.com-collapse levels when it comes to monthly job-cut announcements. There have been 15 consecutive months in which job cuts have not exceeded 100,000. Job cuts have not exceeded 50,000 since March,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“To put this in perspective, job cuts never fell to these levels following the 2001 recession; not even when the economy was reaping the rewards of the housing boom. You have to go all the way back to the expansion of the late 1990s and early 2000 to find a similar pace of downsizing,” said Challenger.
