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Job toll continues to rise
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December 5, 2001: 10:07 a.m. ET
Survey finds job cuts since Sept. 11 attack nearly match 2000 total.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. firms have announced nearly as many job cuts since Sept. 11 as they did in all of 2000, according to a survey by a leading outplacement firm.
The survey by Challenger Gray & Christmas found there were 181,412 job cuts announced in November, bringing the total since the terrorist attacks to 624,411. That is only 11,000 less than the firm's survey recorded all of last year, and more than it saw in any year from 1993 through 1997.
"The very heavy downsizing reported in November is more confirmation that the effects of the Sept. 11 attack on the economy have been substantial," John Challenger, CEO of the firm, said. "In the eight years we have tracked job cuts data, the downsizing for the last three months has been at levels never before seen."
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A recent job fair in New York for people who lost their jobs following the Sept. 11 attacks. | |
The pace of announced cuts actually has slowed since October's 242,192. Still, November was the sixth month this year that announced cuts topped 150,000, showing that the weakness in the employment market predated the attacks.
Year-to-date job cuts announced now stand at 1.8 million, the firm said, nearly three times the total for all of 2000.
The survey comes as the Labor Department prepares to release data on first-time jobless claims last week and the unemployment rate for last month. A survey of analysts by Briefing.com forecasts that jobless claims will come in at 460,000 for the week, down slightly from the 488,000 in the previous week. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 5.6 percent from 5.4 percent in October, as the net drop in jobs was the greatest in 21 years.
Many of the cuts identified by the survey have yet to be implemented, but the survey found that 137,260 actually lost their jobs during November, which is more than three times the 44,152 who lost their jobs in the year-earlier period.
About half the cuts announced in November came from five sectors of the economy - telecommunications, electronics, consumer goods, financial services and the chemical industry. Some sectors that have seen large cuts announced since Sept. 11, such as the transportation sector, had relatively few cuts announced in November as companies worked to implement earlier announced cuts. 
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