The Top 10 Layoffs Of 2010

The rate at which people are losing jobs in the United States has decreased, according to economic data. There is also information, which includes the December ADP report, that suggests that more people have been hired in the last quarter.The ADP Employer Services division reported that companies added 297,000 jobs in December, almost triple the median economists’ estimate.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks national employment trends, reported that layoffs hit their lowest level since 1997 last year when announced plans to eliminate nearly 530,000 positions. This was a huge improvement after the alarming 2009 figures when 1.29 million jobs were lost.

Layoffs may have slowed, but they have hardly disappeared. Ten companies and government agencies  cut more than 100,000 people in 2010. 24/7 Wall St. has analyzed the ten largest individual layoff incidents of last year. One of the most notable pieces of information in data from Challenger Gray is that three of the top ten were made by government agencies. Among the top twenty-five there were  cities, states, and public school systems.

The presence of so many public jobs on the Challenger Gray list is particularly troubling. Government, at all levels, has attempted to build employment. Some of this effort has been made through tax credits. In addition, federal stimulus money has been directed toward specific industries. The reality is that state and municipal governments lost a large part of their tax revenue as the recession deepened. States such as California still have large budgets gaps and will probably be forced to fire more workers. New York State plans to consolidate some of its largest government agencies. From state to state and city to city the need to save money by cutting jobs has become a predictable refrain .

Layoffs by government agencies may only be just beginning. State and city deficits are expected to worsen in areas with the highest unemployment because the jobless pay little in taxes and require much support. The federal government may also go through the same process of firing civil servants as a result of the austerity measures which are in the process of being debated by the new Congress. The private sector could add jobs, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them, in 2011. However, these job additions may be offset as the public sector makes cuts.

There is a bright spot in the analysis of the top 10 layoffs of 2010. Most of them occurred in the first half of the year. That may be a sign that corporations became more confident in their prospects and that of the economy after the Labor Day weekend.

Here are the 24/7 Wall St. Top Ten Lay-offs of 2010:

1. US Postal Service–30,000. The Post Office announced in March that its would cut 30,000 jobs and sharply curtail overtime. The USPS still has over 500,000 workers. Its profitability has been ruined by competition from air freight companies like FedEx (NYSE: FDX) and the growing use of e-mail and the internet to transfer data. The USPS lost $8.5 billion in its fiscal year which ended in September. It is likely that the Post Office will have fewer locations and people at the end of 2011.