Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, said companies announced fewer job cuts in December than they did in November.
Challenger said last week that job cuts announced in December totaled 161,584, down 11 percent from November, when companies announced 181,412 layoffs.
But 2001 witnessed the largest total job cuts of any year since Challenger began collecting data in 1993, with nearly 2 million announced job cuts – almost three times the number of layoffs in 1999.