Wall Street Layoffs to be Highest Ever

Already, 130,000 people have lost their jobs on Wall Street, and there’s still two more months to go, BusinessWeek Online reports. That’s well ahead of the record 116,000 who got the pink slip in 2001. By comparison, only 50,000 lost their jobs last year.

The subprime crisis and resulting credit crunch are certainly to blame, as 80% of the jobs cuts were announced in the last two months and most of the jobs are being eliminated at mortgage firms.

However, mergers and acquisitions investment bankers, financiers and traders are getting canned, as well, although private equity firms and hedge funds have remained fairly insulated so far.

“It’s the worst year on record for job cuts in the financial services sector,” said John Pefferson, a spokesman for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“There is some fear, for sure, that there will be more job cuts,” said one finance industry executive on condition of anonymity.

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