MoneyWatch Tech

June Tech Job Cuts Down from May

By Erik Sherman

Updated on: October 1, 2009 / 1:18 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

More good news on the tech job front, at least insofar as less bad news is good news. September announcements of planned job cuts were down significantly -- 24.8 percent -- from August. This continues a general downward trend, according to figures from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Here's a summary of the months so far:

Sector	January	February	March	April	May	June	July	August	September
Electronics	11,050	11,065	11,500	6,608	1,423	4,103	1,343	1,562	683
Computer	22,330	3,960	5,290	1,702	15,384	2,795	1,684	75	494
Telecom	13,056	5,666	250	262	812	802	17,601	749	617
Total	46,436	20,691	17,040	8,572	17,619	7,700	20,628	2,386	1,794

For the first time in a good long stretch, the tech sector has seen sub-four-digit cut announcements in each segment. Here's a graph of the trends:

The drop is doing better than the national average, which still saw a 13 percent reduction between August and September, and overall job cuts were 30 percent lower than in September 2008. However, the running total this year is 1,136,908, which is almost 50 percent higher than at this point last year. Additionally, we're still seeing cuts, not job creation on the whole.

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