Announced job cuts remain high, firm says

By Catherine Clifford
CNNMoney.com staff writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The number of announced job cuts in December
fell 8.4 percent from a month earlier, but were nearly four times the total of
the same month in 2007, according to a report released Wednesday.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said the 166,348
announced job cuts were the most for the last month of the year since the
company began compiling data in 1993.

December's total was down from the pace in November, when employers
announced a 7-year high of 181,671 job cuts. But the total was nearly four
times the number in December 2007, when employers announced 44,416 job cuts.

The report came ahead of the much anticipated government employment
report due out Friday. A consensus estimate of economists complied by
Briefing.com expects the unemployment rate to have reached 7 percent in
December, an increase from 6.7 percent posted in November, with 475,000 jobs
lost in the month.