Hit by rising health care and energy costs, employers announced more than 100,000 job cuts in November, capping the first three-month stretch above that level since early 2002, an outplacement firm said Tuesday. Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said companies announced 104,530 job cuts in November, up 5.1 percent from a year earlier and 2.6 percent from October.
The September through November totals mark the first time that announced job cuts have topped 100,000 for three or more straight months since January to April of 2002, the firm said. U.S. employers have announced 930,690 job cuts this year.
But if December cuts reach 69,310, it will mark the fourth straight year with 1 million cuts announced by U. S. employers, Challenger added. Challenger said the economy's biggest worry is that a "large number of lower-middle class and middle-class Americans struggling to make it paycheck-to-paycheck will be short of discretionary income during the holiday shopping season." In addition to job cuts, the pace of job creation has been sluggish during the current expansion. The number of jobs created since the last recession ended in November 2001 has been the slowest of any economic recovery in the United States since World War II.
"We've fallen far short of prior economic expansions," said JPMorgan Fleming's Chan. "We're about 5-1/2 million (jobs) short of where would be today if this were a typical expansion."
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