December an Open Season for Layoffs

Ignoring the longtime taboo against firing workers during the holiday season, employers announced 55,237 layoffs last month, double the total of December 1994, according to a survey released Thursday.

The higher-than-expected tally of pink slips came amid a trend of rising layoffs in the last quarter of 1995. All the same, the yearlong total fell to 439,882, down 15% from the 1994 count of 516,069 and off 28% from the peak of 615,186 recorded in 1993.

Many job market experts predict that layoff totals will be heavy this year--deepening workers’ job insecurities--but not as high as in the early 1990s, when a string of giant corporations embarked on massive restructurings. These experts say today’s corporate cutbacks, although frequent, generally involve smaller, more sharply focused layoffs.

Even so, the new year started with a jolt this week when AT&T; Corp. announced plans to cut 40,000 jobs, the biggest corporate layoff since 1993.

Although telecommunications is a growing field, the AT&T; retrenchment could put pressure on competitors to cut staffing too, said John A. Challenger, executive vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based consulting firm that released the layoff survey.

Challenger called last month’s layoff total--up from 27,516 in December 1994 and from 31,389 in December 1993--”an absolute shock.”

“Clearly, the spirit of the holidays disappeared last month from many corporate headquarters,” he said.

In addition, many of December’s announced layoffs stemmed from business failures. That was particularly true in retailing, which recently has suffered a rash of bankruptcy filings.

For all of 1995, the aerospace and defense industry, a vital employer in California, posted the highest layoff total, 62,648, followed by finance at 55,052.