Tech companies swing the job ax

LONDON (ZDNet UK)--More than 200,000 jobs have been cut over the last few months in tech companies around the world as the economic slump has eaten into their profits.

While some tech companies, like Hewlett-Packard, have supplemented layoffs with innovative schemes such as voluntary pay cuts, most have found it necessary to prepare for slower growth by cutting back on staff.

While the tech sector has suffered the worst--with telecommunications contributing around half of the overall job losses--the economic shock has been felt in every sector from food to chemicals.

Among the worst hit in the UK have been British Telecommunications, which on Friday announced additional job cuts that would mostly affect its BT Ignite division, and cable and telecoms company NTL, which said it will lay off 4,300, despite reporting a rise in revenues.

Among smaller job losses, Waterstone's on Thursday announced that it would turn over the operations of its e-commerce site to Amazon.co.uk, affecting 50 jobs, which it hopes to move to other parts of the company.

While big companies continue to cut jobs, the surviving smaller Internet firms are still facing the prospect of going out of business entirely. StepStone, the recruitment site, said on Wednesday it may need more cash to make it to profitability next year, while Scoot.com told investors on Friday it had sold off its 50 percent stake in Scoot Europe to keep from going bankrupt.

The table shows the date when the cuts were announced and only includes layoffs of 1,000 or more.

SECTOR	DATE	JOB CUTS
TECHNOLOGY
Cisco Systems	April	8,500
Hewlett-Packard	July	6,000
Yahoo!	April	3,510
IBM	July	1,500
Infineon	July	5,000
Philips	Over 2001	10,000
Compaq	July	8,000
Coming	July	1,000
TELECOMS
Alcatel	July	14,000
ntl	July	4,300
Avaya	June-July	5,000
Siemens	May-July	10,000
Lucent	July	15,000-20,000
Ericsson	July	Up to 22,000
Motorola	Over 2001	30,000
Marconi	July	4,000
BT	Over 2001	6,000
Nokia	March-June	1,000
ELECTRONICS AND ENGINEERING
ABB	July	12,000
Invensys	May-July	6,000
MAN	March	1,200
Cookson	Over 2001	1,960
MEDIA
Reuters	July	1,100
Dun & Bradstreet	July	1,700