Home Depot EXPO Design Center Gone, Bloody Monday

Is it a sign of the apocalypse?  Are the Four Horsemen preparing to reign down judgments upon the land?

I don’t know.  I do know this, however – more than 50,000 jobs were lost today.

Home Depot EXPO Design Center

First, Home Depot has announced that they are cutting 7,000 jobs as the the nation’s number one home improvement retailer announced that it is closing down its high-end decor EXPO business and shrinking its staff.

The staff reduction should affect about 2 percent of its total workforce. The company said the the latest job cuts shouldn’t affect any customer service positions in its Home Depot stores.

Caterpillar Layoffs

Next up, Caterpillar said today that they’re going to eliminate 20,000 jobs as they try to deal “with a very challenging global business environment.”

The heavy construction machinery manufacturer will shed about 4,000 production employees and around 7,500 management and support staff. Around 8,000 of the layoffs will come from contractors not directly employed by Caterpillar.

The 12,000 total jobs lost equal about 11 percent of the company’s total workforce. Caterpillar currently employs about 113,000 workers.

Sprint Layoffs

In a round of more good cheer for all, Sprint Nextel will layoff a total of about 8,000 people by the end of March.

Sprint hopes to reduce internal and external labor costs by about $1.2 billion, they said in a press release. The layoffs will affect all levels of the company, which currently employs about 60,000 people.

In more wonderful news for Sprint employees, the company also said that it will be suspending its 401K matching contributions for the year, extending a freeze on salary increases and suspending its tuition reimbursement program. Nice.

ING Layoffs

Not to be left out of the fun, ING will take a 2008 loss of $1.3 billion (that’s BILLION), tap into $28.6 billion of Dutch state loan guarantees for its troubled loan portfolio and, oh by the way, also cut 7,000 jobs.

Michel Tilmant will step down as chief executive, the Dutch financial group said, and will be replaced by board Chairman Jan Hommen, 65, former chief financial officer of Dutch electronics group Philips.

Bloody Monday

Rather than be a big buzzkill and continue to rattle off the damages, let’s just sum it up, shall we?

All in all, at least six companies from manufacturing and service industries announced cost-cutting initiatives today that included slashing thousands of jobs.  These are real people with homes and families.

About 170,000 job cuts have been announced so far in 2009 – and it’s only January. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.  I would venture to guess that this year will be much, much worse…