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. So while this is the third consecutive month in which layoffs declined, the job market is still in lousy shape.

Employers have sacked 711,100 employees so far this year. That’s 145 percent percent more than the 290,671 they cut in the first quarter of 2008. Keep in mind, this is “planned layoffs” we’re talking about. Presumably there were some unplanned ones as well.

“Job cuts are still at recession levels, but the fact that they are falling is certainly promising and may suggest that employers are starting to feel a little more confident about future business conditions,” said Challenger CEO John Challenger. “Hopefully, the next few months will bring further relief, as we tend to see downsizing activity slow during the summer months.”

Yeah, “hopefully.” But don’t count on it. Because Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economy hasn’t quite bottomed out yet. Which means things may get a bit worse before they get better.

“The most recent information on the labor market–the number of new and continuing claims for unemployment insurance through late April–suggests that we are likely to see further sizable job losses and increased unemployment in coming months,” Bernanke recently told the congressional Joint Economic Committee.

The technology industry was supposed to cut 180,000 jobs in 2008; instead, it cut 186,955 jobs –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.

Still a chance to break that record, though. Said Challenger, “Cuts could reach even higher in 2009, as there is no evidence yet that the economy has hit the bottom of this downward portion of the cycle. We almost certainly will not see a repeat of the 2008 first quarter, in which tech cuts totaled just 17,345.”