June Tech Job Cuts Down from May

(MoneyWatch)  We got the May job cut numbers from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and announced job cuts hit a 15-month low. In high tech -- which we've been taking to be electronics, computers, and telecom, though there is undoubtedly some high tech falling unseen into other categories -- the announced cuts in June were down 56.3 percent compared to May, when the sector bucked the general trend and actually saw an increase in planned job cuts compared to the rest of the economy.

This is an improvement compared to May, when job cut announcements were more than double those in April. In June, the electronics sector was the only part of high tech that saw a jump in job cut announcements.

Sector	January	February	March	April	May	June
Electronics	11,050	11,065	11,500	6,608	1,423	4,103
Computer	22,330	3,960	5,290	1,702	15,384	2,795
Telecom	13,056	5,666	250	262	812	802
Total	46,436	20,691	17,040	8,572	17,619	7,700

Although there's been of up and down, you can see the general trend in the graph below:

Unfortunately, looking at all sectors for a moment, the six-month total of 896,675 is still the highest since the firm started following job cut announcements in 1989. And assuming that things are out of the woods is -- premature.

"We typically see a decline in job cuts in the second quarter. In fact, it is the slowest job-cut quarter, historically. However, this recent drop-off may be indicative of an overall downward trend in layoff activity. We will probably see job-cut activity increase from current levels in the months ahead, but job cuts in the second half of the year are likely to be lower than the first-half and may even come in below the second quarter of 2008, when 748,045 cuts were announced," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

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