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More job cuts pending
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November 5, 2001: 10:02 a.m. ET
A new tally shows companies set more than 200,000 job cuts in October.
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NEW YORK (CNNmoney) - Employers in the United States announced hundreds of thousands of job cuts in October, the second-worst job-cutting month of the year, a research group said Monday, as the effects of the Sept. 11 terror attacks continued to weigh on the world's largest economy.
U.S. companies announced 242,192 job cuts in October, according to a study by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., compared with 248,332 cuts in September. Of the 490,524 cuts made in September and October, 442,999 of them came after Sept. 11, the group said.
So far in 2001, U.S. companies have announced 1,613,880 job cuts, compared with 613,960 in all of 2000, the report said. October's announcements were 453 percent higher than October 2000, when only 43,799 job cuts were announced.
Telecommunications was the hardest-hit sector in October, as it has been all year, Challenger said. Telecom companies made a total of 42,347 job cuts in October.
Other sectors, however, are actually adding jobs, according to the report, including defense, health care, insurance, energy and social services - in some cases because of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"It may seem as if the light at the end of the economic recovery tunnel keeps getting farther away, but our research has shown that there are opportunities for the growing numbers of Americans who suddenly find themselves unemployed," said Challenger CEO John Challenger.
Job-cut announcements don't translate immediately into job cuts, but the economy still lost 415,000 jobs in October, according to last Friday's Labor Department report, which also showed the unemployment rate rose to 5.4 percent.
Economists expect a recession to follow the Sept. 11 attacks, and the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates nine times - twice since the attacks - to encourage consumers to keep spending despite all the layoffs. The Fed is expected to announce another rate cut after its Tuesday policy meeting. 
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