As Economic Concerns Spread, Even Healthier Companies Cut Further

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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UnemplyOne of the hallmarks of this recession is that even healthy companies are willing to cut costs and cut them more than once.

HP (HPQ) laid off 24,000 people a month ago, ostensibly because it was integrating newly purchased tech consulting firm EDS. It must have missed some people. The computer company is about to cut again.

HP is replacing the CEO of EDS with one of its own. The process is, according to The Wall Street Journal,  "expected to allow H-P to continue to quickly realize its revenue growth and cost-efficiency goals for EDS." That is code for pushing more people out the door.

In the last quarter, HP made over $2.7 billion on $28 billion in sales. The company has $14 billion in cash. Nonetheless, it is still looking for efficiencies and may be looking harder than usual because it is feeling the effects of the economic slowdown.

If the US firms which are still well-off cut hundreds of thousands of more jobs, the process of trying to revive the economy will be much, much longer.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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