MoneyWatch Tech

April Tech Layoffs: Things Improve

By Erik Sherman

Updated on: May 6, 2009 / 10:00 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Challenger, Gray & Christmas just came out with its tally of April layoffs, and there's good news: layoffs continue to drop for the third month running.

Sector	January	February	March	April
Electronics	11,050	11,065	11,500	6,608
Computer	22,330	3,960	5,290	1,702
Telecom	13,056	5,666	250	262
Total	46,436	20,691	17,040	8,572

Layoffs in electronics were down 42.5 percent from March. Computer industry layoffs dropped by 67.8 percent. Telecom was the only sector that saw a jump, but given that went only from 250 to 262, the impact was negligent. Overall, layoffs dipped by a good 50 percent.

I just checked with Challenger and the firm tallies announced layoffs, so the 3,000 that Microsoft just undertook should have been included in the company's previous announcement of 5,000. However, there's no saying whether the actual numbers of layoffs will be less than, equal to, or greater than the numbers that companies announce in advance.

Axe image via Stock.xchng user Marzie, standard site license.