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.
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Tech Industry Announces Layoff Surplus

Well, there’s one thing on the rise amid this declining economy: job cuts. The technology industry was supposed to cut 180,000 jobs in 2008; instead it cut 186,955–up 74.2 percent from the 107,295 job cuts recorded in 2007. That’s the dismal word from recruitment outfit Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which helpfully notes that this is the largest industry workforce reduction since 2003, when tech suffered 228,325 layoffs.