Layoffs | Targeted cuts said smarter in recovery

In a new story, The Wall Street Journal reports today that companies taking a limited and more-targeted approach to layoffs tend to do better in economic recoveries than those that slash employment sharply and across the board. "You can't shrink your way into prosperity," Wayne Cascio, a business professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, told the WSJ.

The current recovery will test notion, the Journal says, because many companies made unusually steep and rapid layoffs during the Great Recession. NYT Co. dramatically reduced employment last year, eliminating 18% of its global workforce.