Rhode Island jobs on the decline

Posted on August 31, 2011

Rhode Island jobs took a dip this summer, according to a new report from an outplacement firm. But overall American jobs are better from last year.

Challenger, Gray, and & Christmas, the outplacement firm, said that United States-based employers announced plans to trim 51,114 workers from the payrolls in August, a 23- percent decline from July, when the number of job cuts hit a 16-month high of 66,414.

The August decline follows three consecutive increases in the monthly job-cut total that saw job cuts rise from 36,490 in April to the July peak. The August total, however, was up 47 percent from a year ago, when employers announced just 34,768 job cuts during the month.

Employers have now announced 363,334 planned layoffs so far this year. That is only 2.9 percent below a 2010 eight-month job-cut total of 374,121. The gap between 2010 and 2011 year-to-date job cuts has steadily fallen over the last few months. In March, year-to-date job cuts were 28 percent behind 2010. By June, the difference dropped to 17 percent. Now, less than three percent separates 2011 and 2010.

“July job cuts spiked as a result of a handful of surprisingly large jobcut announcements in the private sector. It is too soon to tell whether those cuts were an anomoly, but they appeared to be driven by industry- and company-specific trends, as opposed to larger economic ones. In August, the private sector once again took a backseat to the government sector, which saw job cuts surge to the second highest monthly total this year,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.