CHICAGO, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. businesses announced 92,917 job cuts in December, the second consecutive month of declining job losses, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an international outplacement firm.
The Chicago-based recruitment specialist, which tracks job-cut announcements on a daily basis, Monday reported companies eliminated 1,466,823 jobs in 2002 -- the second-highest annual total on record. Businesses chopped a record 1,956,876 employees in 2001.
The good news was that the pace of corporate downsizing slowed 41 percent in December, with 64,591 fewer job losses than November's 157,508. The 92,917 positions eliminated last month were 42-percent lower than the 161,584 job cuts announced in December 2001 as the nation reeled from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
However, Chief Executive Officer John A. Challenger said the November-December downturn in job-cut announcements is nothing to celebrate and cautioned that the nation's economy is not out of the woods yet.
"The drop below 100,000 (job cuts) in December is not much to celebrate nor is it an indication of a downward trend," said Challenger. "To put it in perspective, in 1998, the heaviest job-cut year prior to 2001, the monthly average was 56,483."
Job-cut announcements during the fourth quarter of 2002 jumped 58 percent from the third quarter and were 27-percent higher than the fourth quarter of 2001.
Telecommunications bore the brunt of the job losses, 268,857 jobs -- 18 percent of all job losses in 2002 -- more than twice the 131,294 cuts announced in the computer industry.
High-tech industries including telecom, computer, electronics and e-commerce accounted for nearly one-third (32 percent) of job losses last year.
"Telecommunications and other high-tech industries will probably continue having troubles in 2003, which does not bode well for the workers who have managed to keep their jobs," said Challenger. "The biggest problem the sector is facing is the lack of new technology spending on the part of businesses."
A recent survey of 150 CEOs by the Business Roundtable found technology and capital spending are not expected to rebound in 2003, with 80 percent of corporations hesitant about capital spending until the economy turns around.
Sixty percent of the CEOs said they expected their companies to make more job cuts, he said.
