Report states more than 84,000 tech jobs were lost last quarter

A new report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has released figures that show that 84,217 people were laid off from the tech sector last quarter. This figure is five times the amount that was reported the previous year. The layoffs were also up 27 percent from the last quarter of 2008 and 12.7 percent more than all tech jobs lost in 2008.

The reporting firm splits the tech sector into three main categories: telecom, electronics and computer. While the telecom sector saw a small drop in layoffs this quarter, computer and electronics companies experienced big jumps. Challenger, Gray & Christmas expect the trend to continue as bigger companies take advantage of the recession by buying out smaller entities. Another factor is that IT spending will likely drop at least 3 percent this year.

The data is not very surprising considering that each week reports have been flooding in that more and more companies, including bigwigs Yahoo and Google have handed out pink slips. Also, the numbers are not near the layoffs that occurred during the dot.com collapse in 2001.

Read: [Washington Post]