Techcrunch Starts Live LayOff Tracker For Tech Jobs

Techcrunch has started a live online layoff tracker for jobs “lost” in the tech industry. I first came across this tracker site less than a week ago, when the number of tech jobs lost since end of August 2008 was still under 100,000.

Today, it appears to have crossed that landmark and is standing tall at 108,531. That is an average of over 25,000 tech jobs every month so far !

The Federal WARN Act (The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) requires most employers to give a 60 days notice of impending layoffs.  That coupled with some companies announcing their layoffs on their company blogs makes me trust this tracker to be fairly accurate for tracking tech job losses in Depression 2.0.

Of course, there will always be a margin of error, in part, caused by tech firms that defy such laws and cut jobs without warning (March 2001).