Last April, Citi set layoffs of 17,000 people, or about 5% of its more than 300,000 employees.  Circuit City announced a few weeks ago that they are closing 155 stores and cutting thousands of jobs.  The company said that it has been warned about being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, due to a share price below $1 for over 30 days.  AMD, Intel Corporation’s arch nemesis, is declaring a layoff round of 500 employees as well.  Comp USA is entirely online now with shipping, having closed all of their retail stores within the past year.

Yet, companies like Best Buy, although repositioning a couple stores in our area to be near more densely populated areas, seem to be doing well.  The stores are packed, every time I’m in there and prices are as competitive as ever.

In the new presidency under Obama, we may begin to see an explosion of recession-proof jobs in 2009.  Several areas expected to remain strong include:

• education
• energy
• health care
• international business
• environmental sector
• security

Other planned layoffs…

Hewlett-Packard announced back in September that it will be laying off about 8% of its workforce – about 24,600 employees.

Legg Mason, Baltimore’s third-largest public company, and employed about 1,100 people as of January 2008, is planning layoffs.

Goldman Sachs announced October 23rd that it will be laying off about 10% of its work force as the downturn in the credit and lending markets continues.

Yahoo! is looking to cut 1,500 jobs as it struggles to deal with a crumbling economy that ate away at its third-quarter profit.  This represents roughly 10% of their 15,000 employees.

The state of Virginia is expecting ot lay off 570 state workers.  The job cuts are the worst in five years in Virginia.  The Democratic governor says the state is likely to be at least $970 million short this year and may be up to $1.5 billion short in the fiscal year that begins next summer.

Coca Cola is planning cuts in its IT department, which currently has about 1,100 employees.  They will be told in mid-November of the status of their position.  Pink slips will be handed out by the end of the year.

Sony Ericsson will lay off 450 employees at the company’s R&D department in North Carolina.  With plummeting profits over the past two quarters, the company has said it will have to cut workers from the payroll.

Yesterday AMD reported that it terminated five hundreds jobs worldwide in an effort to cut costs and achieve a $1.5 billion “breakeven.”  Stock prices have also fallen, closing at $2.65 per share as of October 28, dropping nearly 90 percent since early 2006.  Currently Intel Corporation owns roughly 80 percent of the microprocessor market, leaving AMD the remaining 20 percent.