Tech Layoffs Surge Past 100,000

After a lull around Thanksgiving, December has seen some of the biggest layoffs in the tech industry yet since the economy entered its tailspin in the fall. Our Layoff Tracker is now past 100,000 lost jobs (109,629, as of this writing) across nearly 300 different technology and media companies both large and small. To put this in perspective, Citigroup alone announced 52,000 layoffs in November, and across the U.S. economy, just counting September and October, there were nearly 500,000 unemployment claims as a result of mass layoffs (data isn't in yet for November or December).

December, though, has seen no let-up in the number of tech jobs being eliminated. Sony announced 8,000 layoffs on Tuesday, AT&T topped that with 12,000 the week before, and Alacatel-Lucent added another 1,000 today. Yahoo's previously announced layoffs of 1,500 employees took effect this week, and Cnet saw the brunt of the estimated 275 layoffs across CBS interactive (although other units, such as Last.fm, were not spared).

Pink slips were also passed out at Divx (21), Silicon Graphics (160), and Sandisk (300). But the single worst day so far was December 4th, when 18,816 tech jobs disappeared. Most of those (12,000) came from AT&T, but on that day layoffs hit Real Networks (130), IBM Japan (2,500), Viacom (850), NBC (500), and Careerbuilder (300)

If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it?s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article. (For those more interested in who is hiring, check out our job board).

Source : Washington Post
[tags : recession bankrupt collapse retrenchment financial news collapse stagnation economic slowdown financial collapse world recession global recession layoff job cut]