NEC to cut 20,000 jobs

NEC will shed 20,000 workers across its Japanese and worldwide operations

Japanese electronics giant NEC has become the latest company to announce huge job cuts, revealing on Friday that a major restructure would see the loss of roughly 20,000 employees.

The cuts will come from NEC's Japanese and worldwide operations.

The company estimated that it lost ¥129bn (£1.01bn) over the past nine months owing to a slow mobile market, falling demand for its semiconductor offerings and an unfavourable currency exchange rate.

NEC's huge losses are a stark contrast to forecasts made just three months ago, when the company predicted a yearly profit of ¥10bn (£78m). The latest projection drops the earnings estimate by ¥305bn (£2.4bn).

The job cuts will be among the largest in what has been a crippling wave of layoffs throughout the technology industry. AT &T cut 12,000 jobs in December, and Sprint Nextel cut 8,000 employees cut last week.

The NEC total still falls far below the 30,000 employees who lost their jobs when electronics retailer Circuit City was forced to liquidate after filing for bankruptcy protection.