It has been just over a year since Wall $treet and the Bankers lead the global economy to the edge of collapse. Thanks to Obama-money our money Wall $treet and the Bankers are making million-dollar bonus’ again while worker layoffs continue. All must be right in the economy, right?
According to my information, nearly 550,000 tech-related jobs have been eliminated since October 2008. January 2009 saw almost 164,000 jobs eliminated by the biggest names in tech. Ericsson. Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Sprint-Nextel all eliminated 5,000 or more jobs in January 2009. While this is old news, unless you are still trying to live through one of these “right-sizing” it is also important because we are coming back around to the lay-off season.
This year’s lay-off season is trending up after several months of decline. From a record high in January tech layoffs declined to a modest 4,336 layoffs in June 2009. Since reaching that bottom the tech layoff rate has increased to levels not seen since May 2009. August 2009 had almost 5,000 layoffs. The number of layoffs in September doubled to 10,246. The trend has been increasing since with 12,704 layoffs in October and in the first half of November, there have been already been 12,749 layoffs. Some of the same firms that had “resource reduction actions” in January had laid off more people in November, including Ericsson (700), Microsoft (800), and Sprint-Nextel (2,500).
It appears to me that despite Wall $treet bonus’. the rest of us are still in for at least 12 more months of questionable job prospects
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.