Citigroup Layoffs To Slam NYC

Oh, man...this is brutal.

Citigroup Inc.’s reduction of 52,000 employees announced on Monday is the second-largest job cut ever undertaken by any company on record, according to consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. Only the 1993 bloodbath at Big Blue, when IBM let go 60,000 people, was larger. Put another way, the number of jobs being eliminated at Citi is equal to the total amount lost throughout the entire U.S. financial services industry in 2006, according to Challenger Gray.

The cuts figure to have a severe impact on the New York economy, considering that Citi is the city’s second-largest private employer behind only the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System, according to Crain’s research. Citi had 27,000 staffers in the city in 2005, according to the most recent available data. That number has likely shrunk since then because Citi had already laid off 23,000 employees, or 6% of its worldwide workforce, heading into Monday’s news that it would sack another 20% in what it called “the near-term”—a phrase that seems designed to leave room for additional job cuts later.