Companies announced nearly 40,000 layoffs last month, more than any October on record, and one of the highest one-month

[Wiz Imp]

3. Actually, the average monthly job loss over the last 3 months of 2008

was 638,000. This year's October number would have been really bad given that all those Federal employees who took the deferred resignation offered early in the year should have come off the Federal payroll in October, creating a massive Federal Government job loss. Given that October data collection was not performed, I'll be curious how they come up with the estimates for October. (They aren't doing an official release for October, but they still have to come up with an estimated level to link off of for the November estimates.)