Dot-Com Layoffs Near Two Year Low
Dot-com businesses
cut 670 employees in February, the lowest number since 327 dot-com job
losses were announced in April 2000, according Challenger, Gray & Christmas,
an international outplacement firm.
The figure
is a far cry from the 11,649 Internet-related job cuts announced in February
a year ago.
"Unfortunately,
the dramatic decline in job cuts is not necessarily good news for the sector,"
said Chief Executive Officer John A. Challenger. "Its ranks have been decimated
and right now there is no indication that we are going to see a major rebound
in hiring."
Between November
2000 and June 2001, 93,447 dot-com job cuts were announced.
Challenger
said it could take years for the Internet to live up to the potential it
showed before the dot-com bubble burst two years ago.
"Companies
that survived the collapse did so by cutting back to the bare bones and,
despite these measures, many are still waiting to see their first profits,”
Challenger said. “At that point, we may start to see hiring increase, but
we will probably never again see the type of buildup that occurred in the
late 1990s."
The 670 dot-com
jobs eliminated last month were 62 percent lower than the 1,802 cuts announced
in January and the fewest in nearly two years. Three hundred of February's
cuts were in the financial sector and 159 jobs were lost in consumer services.
Challenger
said job losses at dot-coms, with the exception of October, have decreased
every month since April 2001, when the monthly toll peaked at 17,554.
A total of
144,912 jobs have been lost in the dot-com sector since Challenger, Gray
& Christmas began tracking Internet industry cuts in December 1999.
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Copyright 2002 by United
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