November 22, 2005 5:25 PM

GM to shed 30,000 workers, 12 plants
Posted by Jason Tuoheyat 5:25 PM

This is hardly breaking news at this point, but General Motors Corp. announced it will cut 30,000 hourly jobs and close 12 facilities. This is just the latest in a series of huge layoffs this year to affect massive US institutions. Hewlett-Packard announced plans to chop 15,000 off its payroll in July, while IBM made similar plans in April, albeit mostly for its foreign workforce. GM ranks fifth on the Fortune 500 list this year, while HP and IBM appear at 10 and 11, respectively.

But wait, there's more: Bank of America Corp., which has climbed in recent years to 18th on the Fortune 500 list, said in March it would shave 1,400 jobs off its Massachusetts workforce as part of the 12,500 it said it needed to make at the end of 2004.

Four of the top 20 Fortune 500 companies, and approximately 72,500 jobs gone. Big numbers all around.