Layoffs By US Employers Down 86% In March From Height Year Ago - Survey

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st April, 2021) The number of monthly layoffs in the United States has fallen 86 percent from the height amid the restrictive measures implemented to combat the coronavirus pandemic a year ago, labor market consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a private survey published on Thursday.

"It appears we have entered a recovery phase where job eliminations are slowing and companies are able to predict and assess where growth will occur,"� the counsultancy's Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger said in the survey, which cited 30,603 job cuts last month versus 222,288 in March of 2020.

Month-on-month, the layoffs reported in March were down 11 percent from the 34,531 cuts announced in February, the survey said. For January to March this year, there were 144,686 layoffs, down 58 percent from the 346,683 reported in the first quarter of 2020.

The cuts were led by companies in the aerospace/defense industry, which announced 31,073 layoffs in March. This is 338 percent higher than the 7,090 cuts announced through the same period of last year in that sector. Telecommunications follows with 24,157 cuts, up 112 percent from the 11,409 reported last year, as companies in this sector pivoted to new technologies.

While layoffs plunged, hirings remained markedly lower for the first quarter of this year versus last year. Challenger said there were just 316,233 job additions announced for January-March, down 66 percent from the� 824,610 reported in the same period of 2020.

A year into the crisis induced by the government restrictive measures amid the coronavirus outbreak, restoring jobs growth remains one of the biggest challenges of US policy makers.

Some 719,000 Americans filed for jobless claims last week, according to Labor Department data on Thursday that showed weekly filings back above the 700,000 level that economists say demonstrates the job market's struggle to turn the corner.