Challenger, Gray & Christmas - and stop me if you've heard this before - is an "outplacement consulting firm". This means that, when a company is getting ready to "outplace" employees, they get hired to try to soften the blow and make the company look better by prepping them for their newly unemployed status, and by coaching them on how to look for work. As a result they get a lot of insight into current layoff plans, and they use that insight to create a monthly report discussing these layoffs.
The report has one particularly interesting feature. It reflects planned layoffs announced during a given month, but not actual job losses for the month.
May saw employers announce plans to cut a total of 37,135 jobs, a 1.8% increase from April. Government and non-profit sector planned layoffs led the pack, representing 39.7% of the total (14,755 announced job cuts), followed by aerospace and defense at 15.6% (or 5778 planned layoffs). The top three reasons for planned layoffs were cost-cutting measures (43% of the total), business closing (33.8% of the total) and restructuring (9.4% of the total).
The analysts don't bother to make predictions for this particular release, so let's go straight to the report. June saw US-based employers announce a total of 41,432 job cuts, an 11.6% increase from May. The government and non-profit sector continues to lead the pack with 10,176 announced layoffs (24.6% of the total). Second place was claimed by the health care and products sector, with 3,729 announced layoffs (9% of the total) - the food sector almost tied for second, announcing 3,500 layoffs (8.4% of the total). Restructuring took the lead slot in "job cur reasons" at 36.6% of the total, followed by cost-cutting (24.1%) and closing (18%).
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