Tech Layoffs Return with a Vengeance

After layoff activity in the tech industry quieted down around the holidays, it’s come back with a vengeance in January. According to our Layoff Tracker, 80,076 job eliminations have been announced or completed since the beginning of the year. The total number of tech layoffs since we began tracking in late August is now 195,856.

This past week alone, substantial layoffs were announced by Ericsson (ERIC) (5,000), Intel (6,000), and Microsoft (MSFT) (5,000). The biggest job loss by far is the 34,000 employees of Circuit City, which announced it is going out of business last week.

Among startups, layoffs hit Digg, Federated Media, and O”Reilly Media. Even Google was not immune, with 100 internal recruiters losing their jobs, many more contractors, and rumors swirling that more cuts may be on the way.

If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it’s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article. (For who is hiring, check out our job board).

Below is the list of January layoffs from our tracker.

Company	Date	Location	#	%	Source
Digg	January 22, 2009	San Francisco, CA	7	10%	Cnet
Microsoft	January 22, 2009	Redmond, WA	5,000	5%	TechCrunch
Ericsson	January 21, 2009	Stockholm, Sweden	5,000	6%	Cnet
Bose	January 21, 2009	Framingham, MA	1,000	10%	Boston Globe
Intel	January 21, 2009		6,000		Network World
Clear Channel Radio	January 20, 2009		1,850	9%	paidContent
Warner Brothers	January 20, 2009	Hollywood	800		Yahoo Finance
SEGA	January 20, 2009	San Francisco, CA	30		IGN
Circuit City	January 17, 2009	USA	34,000	100%	Circuit City website
Federated Media	January 16, 2009		7		Company Blog
AMD	January 16, 2009		1,100	9%	Washington Post
Autodesk	January 15, 2009	Worldwide	750	10%	Reuters
Oversee.net	January 15, 2009	Los Angeles	40	18%	DomainName Wire
O’Reilly Media	January 15, 2009	Sebastopol	30	14%	Press Democrat
NEC	January 15, 2009	Australia	200		Daily Telegraph
Google	January 14, 2009		100	1%	Official Google Blog
Varolii	January 14, 2009	Seattle		8%	TechFlash
Oracle	January 14, 2009	United State	500	1%	MSN Money
Plantronics	January 14, 2009	Santa Cruz	900	18%	San Jose Mercury News
Motorola	January 14, 2009		4,000		Wall Street Journal
WatchGuard	January 13, 2009	Seattle	55	9%	TechFlash
TBD Networks	January 13, 2009	San Jose	5	50%	TechCrunch
Financial Times	January 12, 2009	London, UK	80		Guardian
Seagate	January 12, 2009	US	800	10%	AP

Comments

[john s. gordon:]

consider how MOT was about a $50 stock only 9 yrs ago.

i thought @ the time that the company suffered from inbred management - too many galvins on the board of directors.

sold all my shares.
> jack

Jan 25 05:17 PM

[The Process...:]

I left the Silicon Valley for a job in San Diego in October. Not because my job was going away. More for a change of scenery after so many years of painful ups and downs of the tech sector. While San Diego is not immune to job loss (Just ask Qualcomm), there does seem to be a more lax response to the pressures of the nasty economy. Guess that's what plenty of surf and sun will do for you. I would be contemplating a diet change to cold blue steel if I worked at, say Motorola, in wintery Schaumberg these days!

Jan 25 09:27 PM

[Mark Goldes:]

A Human Investment Tax Credit program was designed to generate 3 to 6 million new jobs and encourage between 1 to 4 million men and women to become self-employed.

Curing unemployment without creating inflationary pressures is clearly feasible if we view the economy from new perspectives and adopt appropriate tools and policies.

A few decades ago a program of employment tax credits was suggested in a pair of reports prepared for the Commerce Department. A new 2009 Report, can be downloaded without charge at aesopinstitute.org

Overfull rather than merely full employment may prove possible. Overfull employment, defined as 2% unemployment, was achieved during World War II.

The 1977 job tax credit program, which adopted a few of the recommended incentives, generated almost a million private-sector jobs; twenty percent of all new jobs created that year. It resulted in more jobs in less time than any prior legislation. Only a third of businesses were aware of the little-publicized tax credits. A mere third of those eligible utilized them. The White House opposed the job tax credits and they were not much publicized.

If promoted with all of the suggested incentives, the nation might have met the original goal of generating three to six million new jobs and encouraging one to four million people to become self-employed. The following year the program was gutted and became the much less effective targeted jobs-tax credit.

The tax incentives in the Human Investment Tax Credit program have been updated in the 2009 Report and can be voted into law. That should be a first order of business for the new Administration and Congress.


On Jan 25 02:24 PM ED K wrote:

> The urgency of the un-employed and future un-employed is not being
> addressed by our government.You would think with all the adversity
> our country is facing,they'd be working day and night to come up
> with solutions.Heaven forbid that they should do anything above and
> beyond,they are surely not doing the peoples business,as usual!!!!!!

>
>
> The lay-offs in the tech industry and what I expect will happen in
> all other industries is going to be monumental by the time this current
> economic crisis is over.Consider yourself lucky if you retain your
> job for the next four years.
>

Jan 26 12:19 PM