There are limitations to Challenger's data. It only reports announced layoffs, which means that smaller layoffs may go unreported. But the data does help illustrate the broader trends.

At this point last year, Challenger had tracked 35,375 job cuts; for all of 2010, Challenger tracked 46,825 cuts. That was down sharply from 2009, when it reported nearly 175,000 job cuts in the tech industry.

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

in Computerworld's IT Industry Topic Center.