It was a bad day for jobs in the trade on Thursday, as layoffs hit three retail and wholesale companies.  Borders cut another 136 employees, mostly from its Ann Arbor headquarters.  That was 12% of the remaining corporate workforce, now down 30% since last June (see “Borders Drops the Axe on 274”). 

Unlike the situation at Borders, Best Buy is #1 in its category and profitable, so the layoff situation is a little different there.  The company cut 250 headquarters workers, but added 210 different positions.  The layoffs took place after about 500 of its headquarters employees took voluntary buyouts averaging 7.5 months  pay for the average non-managerial employee. 

And we’ve heard that there were at least some layoffs at library wholesaler Brodart yesterday, but have no additional details at this time.