No one wants to be handed the dreaded pink slip. But that was the unfortunate reality for more than 450,000 workers last year.
Although that number of layoffs may be alarming, it was the “lowest count of year-end job cut announcements since 1997,” 24/7 Wall St. said.
Although some companies, such as Coldwater Creek, were forced to lay off workers in 2014 because of bankruptcy issues, 24/7 Wall St. said that isn’t always the reason.
… Gray & Christmas CEO John Challenger explained that this is not the case for most companies. Particularly in a strong economy, many companies are “doing regular strategic evaluation of their business looking for areas of redundancy, [and] looking for ways to make their organization a tighter ship.”
The tech industry cut 58,000 jobs last year, more than any other industry, 24/7 Wall St. said. In fact, tech companies, such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, had the most company cuts overall.
At 42,000 cuts, the retail industry had the second most planned layoffs.
These are the companies that had the highest number of planned job cuts in 2014:
- Hewlett-Packard Co. 21,000 layoffs.
- Microsoft. 18,000.
- Cisco System Inc. 6,000.
- JPMorgan Chase. 5,500.
- Coldwater Creek. 5,500.
- Sears Holdings. 5,400.
- Intel Corp. 5,350.
- Sprint Corp. 5,000.
- Procter & Gamble. 4,430.
- Amgen Inc. 4,000.
Only publicly traded American companies were considered for the list.
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