Microsoft announced plans on Thursday to cut 18,000 jobs, which would be the biggest single layoff round for the tech industry this year. But the size of that layoff doesn’t make it into the list of big-time job losses–at least not when looking at sheer numbers.
微软（Microsoft）上周四宣布，计划砍掉18000个工作岗位。这将是科技行业今年规模最大的一轮裁员。但就绝对数值而言，微软此轮裁员还没法跟历史上最高的几次记录相提并论。
Following the financial crisis, a number of companies took an axe to payrolls. While the unenviable record for the biggest-ever layoffs goes to IBM for cutting 60,000 jobs in 1993, most of the record-setting layoffs have happened since 2000.
金融危机后，许多企业都进行过裁员。尽管说有史以来规模最大的裁员是IBM在1993年砍掉6万个职位，但大部分“创纪录”的裁员，都发生在2000年之后。
Microsoft’s competitor Hewlett-Packard has gone through an ongoing series of layoffs since 2008. In May, it announced 16,000 layoffs, though its largest round of job cuts came in December last year when CEO Meg Whitman announced that the company would let go of another 34,000 workers.
微软的竞争对手惠普（Hewlett-Packard）自2008年以来进行了一系列裁员。今年5月，惠普又宣布裁员1万6千人。不过，惠普规模最大的一轮裁员是去年12月份，当时该公司首席执行官梅格o惠特曼宣布将裁掉3万4千名雇员。
The superlatives are based on total number of jobs cut. Normalizing the layoffs for the total number of employees gives a different picture.
以上是就裁员的总人数而言。如果计算裁员人数占雇员总数的比重，则是另一番景象。
Below is an image of the same companies from the chart above, adjusted for each company’s headcount at the time of the layoffs.
下图反映的公司与上图一样，只不过展示的是裁员数占裁员时公司总雇员数的比例。

In this view, Microsoft’s round of cuts ranks as one of the largest. The 18,000 layoffs account for 18.18% of Microsoft’s overall workforce. That’s a greater proportion than Citigroup’s massive 2008 layoffs (14.77% of the company) or IBM’s record-setting job cuts (about 8% of the company) over 20 years ago. Even HP’s combined 50,000 job cuts over recent months are proportionally less: They account for 15.7% of HP’s total workforce.
这样看，微软此轮裁员算是规模最大的裁员之一。18000的裁员人数占到微软总雇员数的18.18％。这个比例，比花旗集团（Citigroup）在2008年的裁员14.77％，以及IBM在 20多年前的裁员8%创下的纪录更高。就比例而言，甚至高过惠普过去几个月高达5万人规模的大裁员（总裁员比例15.7％）。