This Chart Truly Depicts New, Terrible Trend in Jobs Mess

Saturday, October 3, 2015
By Paul Martin

by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
October 2, 2015

The jobs report today has been described as “ugly,” though it certainly didn’t, or shouldn’t have, come out of the blue: Layoffs in the energy, Big Tech, retail, and other sectors have recently mucked up our rosy scenario.

“The third quarter ended with a surge in job cuts,” is how Challenger Gray, which tracks these things, started out its report yesterday. In September, large US-based companies had announced 58,877 layoffs. In the third quarter, they announced 205,759 layoffs, the worst quarter since the 240,233 in the third quarter of 2009!

Year-to-date, we’re at nearly half a million job cut announcements (493,431 to be precise), up 36% from the same period last year. And they’re “on track to end the year as the highest annual total since 2009, when nearly 1.3 million layoffs were announced at the tail-end of the recession.”

These dogged references to crisis-year 2009!

It’s been going on all year. In the first half, it was the energy sector. But more recently, Big Tech and others jumped into the fray.

Biggest sinners this year: HP 30,000 (laying off people through thick and thin is what it does best); Target 17,000; Schlumberger 9,000 in January and another 11,000 in April; supermarket chain A&P 8,500; Microsoft 7,800; Baker Hughes 7,000; and down the line, including CAT a week ago with 5,000.

The energy sector is still number one this year with 72,708 job cut announcements. Retail isn’t far behind with 68,871, the computer industry with 58,874, and industrial goods with 44,057. These are just the largest employers with big announcements that make it into the report.

The Rest…HERE

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