No Signs of Improvement in Two Jobs Reports

Chicago, IL, Nov. 5, 2008--Two employment reports released Wednesday showed the largest number of planned job cuts in nearly five years, with private sector jobs falling by the largest amount in nearly seven years.
 
Job cut announcements by U.S. employers rose to 112,884 in October, up 19% from September's 95,094 cuts, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. That was the highest number of layoffs since January 2004. Layoffs last month were up 79% from October 2007, when 63,114 job cuts were announced.

In another report, payroll manager ADP said Wednesday that the private sector lost a seasonally adjusted 157,000 jobs last month - more than six times September's decrease and the largest drop since December 2001.

Friday, a report from the Department of Labor is expected to show that 200,000 jobs were lost in October and that the unemployment rate grew to 6.3% from 6.1% a month earlier.

October's numbers bring the total number of planned job cuts to 875,974 in 2008, 14% higher than all of 2007 and the largest 10-month total since 2003.

The embattled financial and automaking industries were hit the hardest, as they have been all year. The struggling industries have seen a combined 239,760 layoffs so far this year, representing 27% of all layoffs in 2008.

Of the 25 industry categories that the Challenger report tracks, 18 reported higher job cuts in October.

The ADP report showed that private sector jobs fell by the largest number in nearly seven years, dragged down by the weak manufacturing and goods-producing sectors.

The decline of 157,000 jobs was worse than the consensus view of economists, who had expected a loss of 100,000 jobs.

"It would not surprise me at all to see many more declines in employment in the near-future," said ADP spokesman Joel Prakken in a conference call with reporters.

Prakken said he didn't anticipate a turnaround for these numbers until the second half of next year, and added that it was "highly likely" that unemployment numbers will be in excess of 200,000 job losses per month for the next several months.