Earlier this month, the automaker said its Powertrain Baltimore Transmission Plant expects to temporarily lay off all 239 of its hourly workers for a week starting Feb. 23 because of reduced demand for the company's vehicles.
Sprint Nextel said it does not know how its Maryland cell phone operations, with 668 workers, would be affected by the cuts.
Maryland has not been immune from the job losses. State officials said yesterday they received layoff notices earlier this month from several businesses. They include:
* 62 workers at bankrupt consumer electronics retailer Circuit City's Catonsville store.
* 119 at Ferris, Baker Watts offices across the state, which was bought last year by RBC Wealth Management, a division of Royal Bank of Canada.
* 147 workers at U.S. Foodservice, the Columbia-based food distributor.
Yesterday's U.S. announcements joined huge layoffs announced by companies overseas. They included 7,000 jobs at ING, the biggest Dutch financial services firm; 6,000 at consumer electronics maker Royal Philips Electronics NV; and 3,500 at Corus, the unit of India's Tata Steel Ltd., Europe's second-biggest steelmaker.
"The fact that we're seeing massive layoffs now, they believe the contraction will last for a long time and that the economy won't come back for a long time," said Pete Kyle, a finance professor at University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and a member of Nasdaq's economic advisory board. "As you enter the recession, firms hoard labor, but when the recession gets bigger, they give up on the idea of hoarding labor and they start letting labor go."
Noting the most recent job cuts, President Barack Obama said yesterday that Congress can't delay passing an $825 billion economic recovery program.
"We owe it to each of them and to every single American to act with a sense of urgency and common purpose," he said at the White House.
"We can't afford distractions, and we cannot afford delays."
But even with the passage of a stimulus plan, economists say, the labor market will recover slowly.
"Even after the unemployment rate peaks at the end of the year to 2010, businesses will not be staffing up as quickly as they cut," Dye said. "It's going to take a while to have the confidence to start expanding payrolls."
In the meantime, economists worry about the toll on workers, who are facing not only more layoffs but reduction in other benefits, such as shorter work hours and freeze in 401(k) matches.
