Looking at layoff activity amid possible Hewlett-Packard cuts

Hewlett-Packard may layoff as many as 30,000 workers. Photo by Flickr user Vernon Chan

With the Facebook IPO finally behind us, it looks like another Silicon Valley company will be dominating the headlines this week.

Unfortunately, instead of instant millionaires, the storyline will feature job seekers if tech giant Hewlett-Packard indeed lays off up to 30,000 workers, as the Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday.  If it plays out, the Journal said, it’d represent about 8 percent of HP’s workforce and be on the largest layoffs since the start of the recession.

It’s grim news for No. 10 on the Fortune 500 list.  And you probably have some local links to the story. With nearly 350,000 workers worldwide, according to the company’s fast-facts sheet,  there are probably some HP employees wondering about their fate in your market.  You can look for branch offices, but keep in mind that these days, sales and service employees in the IT world often have virtual workspaces and are on the go.  And here’s a list of the company’s customer education centers nationwide; that would be a starting point as well.

It’s unlikely that HP workers will bare their souls to reporters before they know their own fates, of course, but you can make contact and have human-interest stories lined up if the cuts affect people in your region.  And often these large workforce reductions include buyout offers or take into account natural attrition, so it is unlikely that 30,000 pink slips will be handed out next week.   (A story on the pros and cons of taking a voluntary buyout in today’s jobs market would be a catchy personal finance angle.)

Then there’s the Department of Labor’s WARN Act; that stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification and requires employers to give 60 days notice of mass layoffs.  Nothing I’ve seen indicates that HP has notified workers of its plans so this too probably provides a buffer zone between this week’s news (which is expected in conjunction with HP’s earnings report) and the actual terminations.

Most activity that meets the government’s definition of “mass layoff” doesn’t hit our radar screens, but if you don’t want to chase local Hewlett-Packard employees, you might use the headlines as a peg for a piece on other layoff activity.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Mass Layoffs page, private nonfarm employers jettisoned more than 180,000 workers in the first quarter of 2012 through 1,077 mass layoff activities.   The quarterly report features quite a few tables that slice the data by industry, by worker characteristics and by state; you should be able to use the tables to present an update on layoff activity in your neck of the woods. 

Related stories would include an update on unemployment benefits in your state (some legislatures are reducing them) and career-related resources for the unemployed.