Planned job cuts by Illinois employers up 46 percent in May
BY FRANCINE KNOWLES Business Reporter fknowles@suntimes.com May 31, 2012 11:32AM
Planned job cut announcements by Illinois-based employers jumped 46 percent in May from a year earlier, but fell 6.2 percent from April, according to a report for Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
There were 1,486 planned job cut announcements last month, up from 1,018 in May 2011 and down from 1,585 in April. The bulk of the cuts were in the industrial goods and transportation sectors.
Since January, overall job cut announcements jumped 42.9 percent from the year-ago period.
Nationally, the number of planned cuts jumped 67 percent last month from May 2011 to 61,887 and spiked 53 percent from the 40,559 announced in April.
Since January, employers have announced 245,540 job cuts, up 20 percent from the 204,374 announced in the same period in 2011. But the number is 70 percent below the 822,282 job cuts announced during that period in 2009.
The biggest announced cuts last month were in the computer sector with 27,754 — 27,000 by Hewlett-Packard.
