US fired over 140,000 IT professionals

Since the beginning of 2008, 140,000 American IT specialists have lost their jobs due to the crisis. At the current rate, by the end of the year, the number of layoffs in the IT sector will exceed 180 thousand.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas (a consulting company that monitors the layoffs of workers in various sectors of the US economy), since the beginning of this year, more than 140,000 employees of US IT companies have lost their jobs due to the financial crisis.

Most of the layoffs occurred in the last few months - since July 2008, about 89,500 IT professionals have lost their jobs. According to the forecasts of researchers, at the current pace by the end of this year, the number of laid-off workers will exceed 180 thousand people.
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In 2007, the volume of reductions amounted to 107.3 thousand, in 2006 - 131.2 thousand, in 2005 - 174 thousand. The worst year in terms of the number of laid-off employees in IT companies was 2001, which accounted for “The collapse of the dot-com” - then 700,000 specialists lost their jobs, according to Challenger.

Companies such as Sun Microsystems (plans to lay off 6 thousand employees or 18% of their staff), Applied Materials (cut 1.8 thousand or 12% of employees) and National Semiconductor have already announced their plans for crisis management. One of the largest reductions this year will be held by Hewlett-Packard , whose representatives in September announced plans to reduce approximately 25,000 employees after merging with Electronic Data Systems .
According to John Challenger (John Challenger), CEO Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Cisco Systems , Qualcomm and Nokia are also expected to decline by the end of 2008 - all of these companies have already reported a decline in sales due to the deteriorating economic situation.

The rapid growth in the number of dismissed follows the pessimistic forecasts about the budgets of IT companies in the next year. So, according to IDC, in 2009 the expenses of companies will grow by only 1%, whereas in August it was predicted that this figure would be at least 4.2%.