On Monday, employers in the US and internationally announced tens of thousands of layoffs in an indication that the economic crisis is accelerating and spreading throughout the American and world economy—and far outpacing governmental measures to respond. Among the major layoffs:
* Caterpillar Inc., the world leader in heavy construction equipment, announced 20,000 layoffs for the first quarter of 2009.
* The drugmaker Pfizer Inc. said it will lay off 8,000 workers, the first casualties of the firm's $68 billion takeover of rival pharmaceutical corporation Wyeth.
* SprintNextel, the cell phone carrier, will cut 8,000 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, by the end of March. It eliminated 4,000 jobs little more than a year ago.
* Home Depot Inc., the largest US home improvement retailer, said it will cut 7,000 jobs and shutter 34 of its Expo home design stores.
* General Motors, the embattled auto giant, announced 2,000 more layoffs affecting plants in Ohio and Michigan, where the unemployment rate has already climbed past 10 percent.
* Texas Instruments Inc., after announcing a precipitous decline in profits, said it would eliminate 3,400 jobs.
* Phillips Electronics, the Dutch electronics giant, said it would cut 6,000 workers from its worldwide workforce.
* Corus Group, a steelmaker, said it would eliminate 3,500 jobs, 2,500 of which will come in Britain.
* The Dutch bank ING announced the elimination of 7,000 jobs after it reported its first-ever quarterly loss.
The scale and rapidity of the layoff announcements are bringing the historic dimensions of the economic crisis into focus. John Challenger, CEO of the employment-tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., commented on the day's bloodletting. "What is remarkable about today is the layoffs seem to be coming from every corner of the economy," he said. "Usually there are sectors that get hit particularly hard. This recession has been focused on housing and financial services, although automotives have come into it as well. But now we have other areas, like retail and technology, as the next wave of the recession hits."
So far in 2009, Challenger has counted 128,600 announced layoffs among only 19 major corporations. It is anticipated that US payrolls will decline by nearly 600,000 in January, which would mark the third consecutive month that the economy has lost more than one half million jobs and the fifth straight month of more than 400,000 job losses. This would be "the first such occurrence of either dating back to the beginning of 1939," Dan Greenhaus of the equity strategy group Miller Tabak & Co. told Marketwatch.
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