Another 74k Jobs Cut

Chron reports another ugly day on the employment front:

Caterpillar Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Home Depot Inc. led companies today announcing at least 73,900 job cuts as sales withered and construction slowed amid a global economic recession that may persist through 2009.

“Certainly since 2001, with the dot-com collapse, we haven’t seen these kinds of large cuts,” James Pedderson, a spokesman for Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based provider of executive-outplacement services, said in an interview. “In terms of the number of companies and the number of cuts, this morning is certainly unusual.”