The rate at which people are losing jobs in the United States has decreased, according to economic data. There is also information, which includes the December ADP report, that suggests that more people have been hired in the last quarter.The ADP Employer Services division reported that companies added 297,000 jobs in December, almost triple the median economists’ estimate.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks national employment trends, reported that layoffs hit their lowest level since 1997 last year when announced plans to eliminate nearly 530,000 positions. This was a huge improvement after the alarming 2009 figures when 1.29 million jobs were lost.

Layoffs may have slowed, but they have hardly disappeared. Ten companies and government agencies  cut more than 100,000 people in 2010. 24/7 Wall St. has analyzed the ten largest individual layoff incidents of last year. One of the most notable pieces of information in data from Challenger Gray is that three of the top ten were made by government agencies. Among the top twenty-five there were  cities, states, and public school systems.

The presence of so many public jobs on the Challenger Gray list is particularly troubling. Government, at all levels, has attempted to build employment. Some of this effort has been made through tax credits. In addition, federal stimulus money has been directed toward specific industries. The reality is that state and municipal governments lost a large part of their tax revenue as the recession deepened. States such as California still have large budgets gaps and will probably be forced to fire more workers. New York State plans to consolidate some of its largest government agencies. From state to state and city to city the need to save money by cutting jobs has become a predictable refrain .

Layoffs by government agencies may only be just beginning. State and city deficits are expected to worsen in areas with the highest unemployment because the jobless pay little in taxes and require much support. The federal government may also go through the same process of firing civil servants as a result of the austerity measures which are in the process of being debated by the new Congress. The private sector could add jobs, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them, in 2011. However, these job additions may be offset as the public sector makes cuts.

There is a bright spot in the analysis of the top 10 layoffs of 2010. Most of them occurred in the first half of the year. That may be a sign that corporations became more confident in their prospects and that of the economy after the Labor Day weekend.

Here are the 24/7 Wall St. Top Ten Lay-offs of 2010:

1. US Postal Service–30,000. The Post Office announced in March that its would cut 30,000 jobs and sharply curtail overtime. The USPS still has over 500,000 workers. Its profitability has been ruined by competition from air freight companies like FedEx (NYSE: FDX) and the growing use of e-mail and the internet to transfer data. The USPS lost $8.5 billion in its fiscal year which ended in September. It is likely that the Post Office will have fewer locations and people at the end of 2011.

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2. Merck (NYSE: MRK)–17,500. American drug companies cut more than 50,000 positions in 2010. Part of this was due to consolidation. Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) cut jobs when it bought Wyeth. The other reason for downsizing in this sector, is that the largest pharmaceutical companies have begun to lose patent protection on their most profitable drugs. Those are not being replaced quickly with new products with similar sales levels. Merck has gone through several phases of firings in an attempt to match costs to falling revenue.

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3. Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ)–13,000. The large US telecommunications company announced job cuts as it posted a loss of $653 million for the fourth quarter of 2009. Verizon’s wireless business has continued to grow. Its landline operations, which serve residential and business customers, have continued to shrink as consumers turn to cellular and VoIP products.  The landline attrition will only get worse.

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4. Sam’s Club–11,200. This division of Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) closed or decreased retail space in several locations and fired employees as the competition for small business customers from firms like Costco (NASDAQ: COST) deepened. The recession and a need to stay competitive meant that Wal-Mart decided that layoffs were critical to maintaining the margins of Sam’s Club.

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5. City of New York–11,000. When Mayor Bloomberg announced his budget last May, he also said the city could not afford to fund its upcoming deficit. His plan included cuts of over 6,000 teachers and 400 firemen. The New York City budget problem is not expected to improve in the current fiscal year, so the layoffs in the nation’s largest city are probably not over.

6. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)–9,000. The HP division which offers IT consulting and services cut workers as it continued a consolidation with EDS which it purchased in 2008. This was one in a long series of job reductions made by former CEO Mark Hurd. His cost cuts were considered essential to several years of earnings improvements at the company.

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7. Illinois Public School System–8,130. The Illinois layoffs were part of a larger national effort to cut school costs in cash-strapped states. California fired more than 20,000 of its educators. Michigan, New York, and New Jersey also laid off large numbers of people. Although education may be a priority for state legislatures, substantial state deficits have forced actions which were unimaginable just two years ago.

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8. Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG)–7,747. P&G faces a problems it cannot readily solve. The commodities used to make a large number of its household and consumer products have risen rapidly. P&G has to offset as much as $2 billion in inflation-related costs of goods sold in 2010. Part of the firm’s efforts to keep margins at acceptable levels were job cuts, pressure on suppliers to offer discounts and better logistics management.

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9. New York State–6,372. The state is in as much or more financial trouble as is any in the country. Newly elected Governor Andrew Cuomo has begun the realize that that will result in a pay freeze that will affect most of the state workers for a year. New York currently has a $10 billion budget gap. Cuomo plans to eliminate 20% of the state’s government agencies, so the slightly more than 6,000 people who were fired from their state jobs late last year are only the beginning in this state’s head count reduction.

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10. Pfizer–6,000. When the merger of Pfizer and Wyeth was nearly done, the combined company had over 70 manufacturing plants. The first stage of the plan to decrease costs was to take a large number of people out of this factory system. Pfizer is in the midst of what is likely to be ongoing job cuts. A drop off in sales of its largest selling drugs as they lose their patents has already led to cuts in sales and R&D.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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