Profiting from layoffs: A new review of 2009 corporate layoffs from the Economic Policy Institute shows many of the layoffs that left a record number of Americans and their families struggling to stay afloat were carried out by some of the year's most successful money-making corporations. From EPI:

While companies typically defend such moves as necessary to prepare for more challenging business conditions in the future, the layoffs they carry out often serve to grow profits for shareholders. Today, the economy is showing signs of growing again but layoffs continue to mount, and this extreme attention on the part of companies to saving money is arguably to blame.

Obviously, many companies hit a level of economic hardship during the recession that they had never experienced before and in order to stay alive, scaled back their operations. But there were also a horrifyingly large number of businesses that saw very big profits in 2009--but decided to lay off thousands of workers anyways, to further pad their pockets.

As millions of families are struggling just to hang onto their homes and get through the next month's bills, shareholders from companies that were not struggling financially in 2009--including Wal-Mart, Aetna, IBM, Verizon and Microsoft--made bigger bank by firing workers. The idea of a company that's earning money, not losing it, enacting cutbacks so they can earn another $10 million or $20 million (or however much) in a year is really the most unethical business practice I can think of.

It sometimes seems as though the bad news for workers at the hands of greedy, overly profit-driven companies is never-ending. After being bailed out by taxpayers, Wall Street banks' 2009 pay pool is on track to set a new record: $150 billion. And earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' third quarter productivity report revealed that while worker productivity has gone up and labor costs have fallen; workers' wages have remained relatively stagnant. Workers are not sharing in the wealth they've helped create, and it's because companies are going to any and all lengths to keep a bigger share of profits.