Fidelity Layoffs The Latest Cuts In Finance

Today, Fidelity Investments continues a layoff plan announced last year when the mutual fund giant said it would cut some 3,000 jobs starting with 1,300 in November and at least another 1,700 in the first quarter, according to the Boston Globe. Some of the latest cuts are reportedly in its FMR Co. unit, which includes managers and analysts who'd managed to avoid past layoffs.

With this latest round, Reuters adds up the total damage from job losses among banks, insurers and asset managers since the start of the credit crisis back in August 2007. So far: 306,000 job cuts have been announced worldwide, with the largest coming from massive U.S. investment banks like Citigroup (75,000 jobs cut), J.P. Morgan (16,900 cuts) and Bank of America (45,000 cuts). Most of the cuts came as surviving banks digested acquisitions of Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, Washington Mutual and others, so the head counts at the big banks are actually quite a bit higher now than at the start of the crisis (J.P. Morgan employed 224,961people at the end of 2008 after the WaMu deal, up from 179.664 in Aug. 2007.) That may not be good news as the realities of lower profits in the finance sector continue to sink in.