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Description: From Ford Motor Company to The United States Postal Service, here are 13 Most Devastating Mass Layoffs in U.S. History. Subscribe to Knowledge Feed for awesome mysteries, discoveries, fun topics and all around AWESOME videos ! 7. U.S. Army In the month of September, 2011, over one hundred thousand people lost their jobs in the United States due to layoffs. The main reason for this was a somewhat unexpected source, the U.S. Army. The military branch announced fifty thousand job cuts thanks to the fact that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were winding down combined with increased pressure to cut government spending. 6. Sears Just months before IBM let go of sixty thousand employees popular department store Sears made the radical decision to release fifty thousand of their own workers. Sinking sales had forced the company to discontinue their big book catalogues which had been a popular feature in rural American homes for nearly a century. This and the shuttering of over 100 stores forced the mass layoffs. 5. United States Postal Service So many industries have been deemed outdated in the past two decades thanks to advancements in technology and have been forced to enact massive layoffs as a result. The United States Postal Service knows this all too well as they have had three huge mass layoffs in the past two decades. In January 2002 as the internet and something called email exploded in popularity the USPS was forced to let go of thirty thousand employees. Nearly eight years later in August 2009 the government industry was forced to terminate another thirty thousand people and they were again forced to release the same amount just half a year later in March 2010. These moves highlighted the fact that the U.S. economy was mired in mass unemployment with employment to population ratios reaching record lows at the turn of the decade. Some workers like these were left with no other option than to take to the streets in protest with signs like “Bail out the Unemployed Jobs Now!” Like libraries, post offices seem doomed to close their doors and bow down to a more connected world. 4. General Motors Anyone who was paying attention remembers how hard GM was hit as a result of the most recent recession. U.S. car sales dropped from 16 million a year in 2005 to 11 million in 2009. It’s no surprise then that the struggling company was forced to layoff nearly fifty thousand workers in February of 2009 or nearly 20 percent of its workforce. While it obviously saved them some money, it didn’t do enough as they were forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just four months later. The layoffs came just three and a half years after they let go of 25 thousand employees in June of 2005. 3. California Teachers Though it’s the smallest mass layoff on this list the people who lost their jobs here were California school teachers and staff members, making the layoffs extremely devastating. In April of 2003 25 thousand teachers across schools in California were handed pink slips saying that they would be laid off. District officials had no choice at the time thanks to Governor Gray Davis’s huge cuts in education funding. While they weren’t all fired, every single one of the 635 contract teachers in one district, Alameda, were issued a pink slip. 2. CitiGroup Investment banking company Citigroup was one of those hardest hit by the economic and credit crisis that started in 2008. In order to survive and move forward they made the decision to cut around fifty thousand workers in November. Many at the time predicted that Citigroup was doing too little too late and wouldn’t survive even with the mass layoffs. They proved these theories untrue as they remain a viable firm to this day that operates as the fourth largest bank in the U.S. behind only Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. 1. IBM IBM shocked the world in July 1993 when they made the decision to lay off sixty thousand people. It marked the first time that the tech company had ever cut its workforce. The radical decision was made by CEO Louis Gerstner Jr. who was a controversial hire himself because he came from outside the company at a time when IBM had traditionally promoted from within. This act changed the perception that when you were employed by the computer giant you had a job for life. As hard as the layoffs were to stomach, they helped IBM find a new path and survive. Today they are one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history that dates back to the 1800’s.