Is the Slide Skidding to a Halt?

New data suggest that the economy’s long-term slide may finally be showing signs of coming to a halt. Specifically, the pace of layoffs tapered considerably in September. 

The latest report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. on downsizing activity reveals that planned job cuts announced by employers last month fell to 34,768, the lowest monthly total in over a decade and a 17 percent decrease from the 41,676 cuts announced in July. August’s number, in fact, broke a three-month-long spate of increases in layoffs.

Compared in all sorts of ways to previous benchmarks, last month looks very good. August now replaces April as the lowest job-cut month of 2010 and is the lowest job-cut month since June of 2000 (when employers announced only 17,241 planned layoffs). Year-over-year, 2010, as well, is looking far better than 2009. Job cuts last month were 55 percent lower than they were in August of 2009, when 76,456 planned cuts were announced, and so far this year, 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.

Even for last month’s largest job-cutter, the pace has slowed considerably year-over-year: In August, the industrial goods sector announced 6,236 planned layoffs. That was not only last month’s largest number, but also the sector’s largest monthly job-cut total for the year. Even so, the year-to-date total in this sector, 16,962, is lower than the 17,528 job cuts employers in industrial goods announced last December alone, and by this point in 2009, industrial goods companies had announced 101,591 job cuts.

Posted by RecruitingTrends.com on September 2, 2010. Filed under Data Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry