CSBJ Daily

Growing unemployment has become a trend, based on data released this week by one of the country’s largest outplacement firms.

Job cuts continued during June, as employers announced plans to reduce payrolls by 81,755 jobs, bringing the total number of job cuts announced during the last three months to 275,292.

Researchers at Challenger, Gray and Christmas said this was the largest quarterly jobs-cut since the last quarter of 2005.

The only good news: the June figures were down 21 percent from the previous month, when job cuts reached a 29-month high of 103,522.

If the pace of job-cutting recorded during the second quarter continues through the last half of the year, annual job cuts could surpass 1 million for the first time since 2005, which was the last of five consecutive years in which job cuts exceeded 1 million.

So far this year, employers have announced 475,948 job cuts, 21 percent more than at this point during 2007 when 393,499 workers lost their jobs.