Half-Million Jobs Vanish as Economy Deteriorates

On a personal level, right before Thanksgiving, Mark Pierce, 51, who was executive pastor at a church in Mansfield, Ohio, was given a choice: get laid off or take a lesser job with a roughly 40 percent pay cut. His last day of work was Tuesday.

Minnie Lawrence, right, works with training career coach Latrisha Payne on how to find employment at the Super Jobs center, Friday, Dec. 5, 2008, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

(AP)

"Anyone in that situation looks at it very personally," he said. "You say, 'Is this a cut across the board, or it just me?'"

It's not just him.

Employers are slashing costs as they cope with sagging sales in the U.S. and in other countries, which are struggling with their own economic troubles.

In recent days, AT&T Inc., DuPont, JPMorgan Chase & Co., as well as jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp., and mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. all have announced layoffs.

Tom Solso, chief executive of Columbus, Ind.-based manufacturer Cummins Inc., said Friday the company planned to cut 500 jobs, or about 3.5 percent of its work force despite other cost-cutting moves such as temporarily shutting down plants, shortening work weeks and extending holiday shutdowns.

Fighting for survival, the chiefs of Chrysler LLC, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. returned to Capitol Hill Friday to again ask lawmakers for as much as $34 billion in emergency aid.

Workers with jobs did see modest wage gains in November. Average hourly earnings rose to $18.30, a 0.4 percent increase from the previous month. Over the year, wages have grown 3.7 percent, but paychecks haven't stretched that far because of high prices for energy, food and other items.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is now expected ratchet down a key interest rate — near a historic low of 1 percent — by at least a half-percentage point on Dec. 16 in a bid to breathe life into the moribund economy. Bernanke is exploring other economic revival options and wants the government to step up efforts to curb home foreclosures.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose department oversees the $700 billion financial bailout program, also is weighing new initiatives such as tapping the second half of that rescue money to ease the economic crisis.