WASHINGTON Pink slips are piling higher during the time that companies scramble to cut costs even deeper to survive the country’sitting economic and financial storms.

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Just days into the new year, managed care provider Cigna Corp., aluminum producer Alcoa Inc., data-storage company EMC Corp. and computer products former Logitech International were among those announcing layoffs to cope with a recession that has just entered its second year. The flurry of job cuts indicate the employment picture force of will remain grim this year.

A barometer on layoffs is expected to show Thursday that the number of newly laid off people signing up for state unemployment insurance utmost week rose to 540,000, up from 492,000 in the previous week, according to economists’ projections.

The number of people continuing to draw jobless benefits is projected to confide near 4.5 million, demonstrating the troubles the unemployed are having in finding starting anew jobs.

Electronic unemployment filing systems bring forth crashed in at minutest three states in recent days exactly to the crush of newly jobless Americans seeking benefits.

“Businesses were panicked at the end of the year and those that had been holding not on on layoffs are now capitulating,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

With jobs disappearing, shoppers held tight to their wallets and pocketbooks last month.

Michael P. Niemira, capital economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, predicts retail sales out Thursday will show a globule for December and the discomfit holiday shopping season because at least 1969.

For all of 2008, employers likely slashed payrolls through at least 2.4 very great number. That’s based on economists’ forecasts for a net loss of 500,000 additional jobs in December, as well as the job losses already reported every month last year by the government. Some, however, think the designate by contain of jobs cut last month will be higher - around 600,000 or 700,000. The Labor Department will release that report Friday.

If the conservative, 2.4 million estimate of payroll reductions for 2008 proves correct, it would mark the first and foremost occurring every year job loss since the previous recession in 2001. It moreover would be the worst year of job losses seeing that 1945, when employers slit nearly 2.8 million jobs. Though the number of jobs in the United States has else than tripled as then, job losses of that sublimity would be sober testimony to the nation’s economic woes.

With employers throttling back hiring, the unemployment rate is expected to spring from 6.7 percent in November to 7 percent in December, which would be the highest in 15- 1/2 years. That figure also will be released Friday.

President-elect Barack Obama, who takes over Jan. 20, is proposing a mammoth $775 billion package of tax cuts and government spending over two years to quicken the on one’s death-bed plan. With add-ons by lawmakers, the package could swell to $850 billion, his advisers say.

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