Seagate to cut 1,100 jobs

The company said that it would be shedding the jobs as part of an ongoing effort to cut costs by roughly US$300 million.

The 1,100 cuts will save the company US$125 million in annual salaries, but will also cost the company $72 million.

The laid off workers account for 2.5 per cent of the company's total workforce. Seagate said that it hopes to complete the process by the end of July. The bulk of the jobs lost will be in the US but Seagate's global operations are also expected to be cut back.

The cuts are not the first to be made by Seagate as of late. The company estimates that within the last fiscal year it has shed some 25 per cent of its payroll. The reductions have come from job cuts and salary reductions as well as the closure of the company's research centre in Pittsburgh, USA.

Seagate hopes that the cuts will help the company to regain profitability by the end of its 2010 fiscal year.

Seagate's are the latest in what has been an ongoing tide of job losses in the IT sector. The news comes just one week after Microsoft cut several thousand employees fresh on the heels of cuts at Yahoo.

Though some companies have expressed hope that the industry is beginning to recover, many firms are still being forced to shed jobs and cut costs.