Layoffs Fall to 10-Year Lows

Businesses may not be hiring at the pace needed, but at least they’ve stopped bleeding workers.

A report released today by outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas shows planned layoffs in August dropped to 34,768, the lowest level in 10 years.

The outplacement firm reported that planned job cuts fell 17 percent from July to August, to 34,768 from 41,767. Compared to August 2009, the numbers are even more encouraging, down 55 percent from 76,456 a year ago.

Through the first eight months of the year, planned job cuts have been 374,121, down 62 percent from last year’s 1,070,504 layoffs through August. “To put this in perspective, job cuts never fell to these levels following the 2001 recession; not even when the economy was reaping the rewards of the housing boom. You have to go all the way back to the expansion of the late 1990s and early 2000 to find a similar pace of downsizing,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger Gray & Christmas.

This report, though, is just one glimmer of light in an otherwise murky economic picture, one that has many small business owners worried about a double-dip recession.

A quarterly survey of about 500 small business owners shows 86 percent of them worried about the possibility of the economy starting to shrink instead of grow.

And while they may not be laying people off, other signs of economic growth are, “stuck in first gear,” Challenger said.

Payroll firm SurePayroll’s monthly Business Scorecard finds continued modest hiring gains among small businesses, but with pay little changed.

Small businesses hiring in July continued at the same pace as in June, up 0.2 percent, for the second consecutive month of 0.2 percent hiring growth, SurePayroll says. The average paycheck was down 0.1 percent after a 0.6 percent decline in June.

Year-to-date, small business hiring is up 4.1 percent, while payrolls are down 0.4 percent, it says.