Isle of Man made redundant

Monday, January 26th, 2009

The steady trickle of job cuts has become something of a grim fascination for me in recent weeks. The numbers are astronomical: 16,000 unlucky folk are staring down the barrel at IBM, while another 5,000 are updating their CVs at Microsoft. Thankfully though, I’m not one to dwell on the merely depressing when outright despair can be found just around the corner. To that end I decided to go looking for the big number waiting at the end of this maudlin rainbow.

Armed with a calculator, Google and fifteen minutes of free time I added up all the recent job cuts. The number is staggering. If you’ve already had a particularly bad day or are considering taking a bath with your toaster, I suggest you look away now. In my completely unscientific estimation, the tech industry has promised to shed 83,650 jobs [running total below the cut]. That’s basically the population of the Isle of Man, and 3,000 more than the den of inequity that is Old Trafford.

Now bear in mind, most of the announced job cuts come with an “up to” caveat. There’s also a couple in there that are speculation at this point, though they’re well-informed speculation. Anyway I’ve listed below my names and figures for your viewing displeasure. Before you take a look though, can I suggest you put down that bread knife.

(more…)