Planned job cuts in the U.S. topped the 100,000 mark for a second straight month in July and are on track to surpass a million layoffs this year, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said Wednesday.
For the month, U.S. employers announced plans to cut 102,971 jobs, after 110,996 job-cut announcements in June, the Chicago-based company said. July's job cuts were 48 per cent higher than the same month a year ago.
So far this year, 641,245 job cuts have been announced, 18 per cent or almost 100,000 more than last year. July marked the third consecutive month and the fifth time this year that the monthly total was higher than last year.
If job cuts continue at their current pace, the year-end total will surpass last year's 1,039,935 level and mark the fifth straight year that 1 million job cuts were announced, the report said.
Consumer products, computer and financial industries were the top three job-cutting industries in July, comprising almost half of the monthly total. For the year, however, the automotive industry is struggling the most.
“If job cuts in the auto industry continue and we start to see consistently high job-cut numbers from the top three job cutters in July, it should set off some relatively loud alarm bells about the state of the job market and economy,” said John Challenger, the firm's chief executive, in a statement.
“One would expect employers in the consumer products, financial and computer sectors to be adding workers by the boatload in an expanding economy,” he added.
Still, some of the cuts stem more from increasing efficiency than from a weakening economy, he said, citing Kimberly-Clark Corp. as an example.
However, other companies are struggling to stay profitable and are likely to announce more job cuts in the future.
Ford Motor Co., for example, said July 21 it may make deeper cuts in its North American salaried work force than it has previously disclosed, a move that could slash up to 30 per cent of the current white-collar work force in the next few years.
© The Globe and Mail
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