(FORTUNE Magazine) – Not even the recent string of brighter economic signs -- including an increase in orders for computers and other manufactured goods -- can stay the relentless blizzard of pink slips. The 46,964 announced job cuts tracked by Challenger Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm, in normally quiet August were the third-highest monthly total for the year. Further announcements through the first three weeks of September of 31,763 have lifted the total body count for 1993 past 430,000. That pace is a startling 30% faster than in the recession year of 1991. The layoff mania is manifesting some worrisome new pathologies. Until recently big layoffs were largely at defense contractors, responding to federal military cutbacks. January and July, the year's two biggest months of job losses, were dominated by megalayoff announcements at troubled companies such as Sears and IBM. But after that job losses broadened, with many smaller reductions at more companies. Now comes the latest trend, as illustrated by the cuts in August and September: ''preemptive strikes,'' as one executive calls them. With inflation low and a predicted slowing down in the growth of the GDP, companies can no longer charge premium prices to maintain profits. That leaves payrolls as the only place left to cut costs significantly. Thus Anheuser-Busch is laying off 1,200 of its salaried employees, Eastman Kodak 10,000 workers, and US West, the regional telecommunications company, 9,000. The layoff juggernaut seems to have bred a mindset among executives to continue lowering head counts. Says Challenger Gray President James E. Challenger: ''So widespread have layoffs become that employers seem to have lost any residual inhibitions they may have had against reducing their payrolls further.''

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