Layoffs down more than 80 percent

Florida employers cut 581 jobs in November, but that was down more than 80 percent from 3,006 layoffs a year ago, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in its monthly jobcut report on Thursday.

Year-to-date, Florida employers trimmed 11,750 jobs, a decrease of 28 percent from 16,432 in the same period a year ago.

In South Florida, two companies had layoffs in November, according to Challenger. Farmers Insurance Group in Plantation had 103 job cuts. In Boca Raton, there were 16 jobs cut by NTT America, which was acquired last year by cloud service provider Verio. The employers could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

November marked the lowest level of layoffs during the year, as U.S.-based employers announced plans to cut 26,936 workers from payrolls during the month, Challenger said. Job cuts were down 13 percent from last November, when job cuts totaled 30,953.

To date, employers have announced 493,288 job cuts in 2016. Challenger said that was 5.5 percent fewer than the 521,847 job cuts recorded by this point in 2015.

“Barring an unlikely December surge in downsizing, the year-end job cut total should remain well below the 598,510 layoffs announced last year,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The retail sector saw the heaviest job-cutting in November, with 4,850 announced layoffs. Most of these resulted from the bankruptcy of American Apparel in November 2015.

But the retail losses are more than offset by the surge in holiday hiring. In September, Challenger tracked retail hiring announcements totaling 317,000.

Florida’s official unemployment report for November, which also includes job creation, is scheduled to be released on Dec. 16.