Lexmark (NYSE: LXK) handed out more than five dozen pink slips Friday to sales and marketing specialists—including channel chief Sharon Brindley (click here for: “Lexmark Without Channel Leader”) in a sudden restructuring at its Lexington, Ky. headquarters.
The Lexmark action is just the latest in a growing string of downsizing among vendors that are laying off staff to offset sluggish revenue in the slowing economy. Since the economic meltdown began in September, technology vendors have shed more than 50,000 jobs.
The largest tech layoff of the year came from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) in September, when it announced the elimination of more than 24,600 jobs resulting from the acquisition of EDS. Since then, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has downsized nearly 9,000 employees to reduce expenses and, most recently, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced the elimination of up to 6,000 workers as part of a restructuring effort.
While Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) say they do not plan any layoffs in the foreseeable future, speculation is running rampant in Silicon Valley and throughout the tech industry that more jobs will be eliminated before the end of the year and through the first quarter of 2009.
The following is a list of tech vendors and the number of jobs they’ve eliminated since September.
Tech Sector Layoffs
(September 14 – November 21)
| Company | Stock Ticker | Date | No. |
| HP/EDS* | HPQ | 09/14/08 | 24,600 |
| Dell | DELL | 10/22/08 | 8,900 |
| Sun Microsystems | JAVA | 11/14/08 | 6,000 |
| Motorola | MOT | 10/30/08 | 3,000 |
| XeroxCorp | XRX | 10/23/08 | 3,000 |
| Sony Ericcson | – | 10/17/08 | 2,000 |
| Applied Materials | AMAT | 11/12/08 | 1,800 |
| eBay | EBAY | 10/03/08 | 1,500 |
| Symantec | SYMC | 10/31/08 | 880 |
| Honeywell | HON | 11/07/08 | 700 |
| Texas Instruments | TXN | 10/20/08 | 650 |
| AMD | AMD | 11/05/08 | 500 |
| Nvidia | NVDA | 09/18/08 | 360 |
| National Semiconductor | NSM | 11/12/08 | 330 |
| Insight | NSIT | 11/10/08 | 240 |
| MPC | – | 11/05/08 | 210 |
| Tektronix | – | 11/04/08 | 150 |
| Cisco Systems | CSCO | 10/13/08 | 129 |
| Palm | – | 11/21/08 | 105 |
| Softchoice | SO | 10/20/08 | 62 |
| Lexmark | LXK | 11/21/08 | 60 |
| Lenovo | 10/14/08 | 50 | |
| Pandora | – | 10/17/08 | 20 |
| Total | 55,246 | ||
* Jobs eliminated by HP were related to the elimination of redundant functions with the acqusition of EDS.