“Putting pressure on an already lousy job market, the mass layoff is making a comeback,” writes Aaron Task for the internet’s Daily Ticker. “In the past week, Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts. He continues:

Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, the Wall Street Journal reports — and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1,000 fixed-income traders.

If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data — not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates

“Everything in business is confidence,” Davidowitz says. “You lose confidence and businesses can’t deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what’s going on in Washington?”

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