The tight white collar.

• Author: Davis, Lisa
• Position: Dowsizing affects even company managers

On July 12, 1990, I had no sooner arrived at work than I found a message from my boss. "Come to my office as soon as possible," he said.

When I got there, he told me, "I'm sorry, but due to rearrangement of resources, your job has been eliminated."

I was so shocked that I couldn't reply. At first I failed to comprehend what "elimination of position as part of internal restructuring" meant. Then I realized it was just some fancy phrase for getting a pink slip. This couldn't be happening to me. Just three months earlier, the company thought I was the next best thing to sliced bread. They had given me an excellent review and the highest raise I had ever gotten.

It's a familiar story. This employee - who prefers to remain anonymous - was one of 838,000 nationwide to be laid off in third quarter 1990. During the same three months last year, 980,000 people were laid off.

That he is from North Carolina shouldn't be a surprise. After enjoying strong employment growth during most of the Reagan era - increasing between 2% and 5.8% a year from 1983 to 1989 - the state suddenly started losing jobs. Employment fell by 0.3% in 1990. The number of layoffs in North Carolina involving 50 or more workers grew from 66 in 1989 to 102 in 1990.

Recent employment statistics from North Carolina offer up more negative numbers. A handful of industries, though, have managed to add jobs, most notably health services, in which employment rose 5.5% from September '90 to September '91, boosted by a 7.1% increase in the hospital work force. Then there's the public sector, where hiring defies the recession: Total government jobs increased by 2.7%. Overall in September, employment was up 1.7%. But for many worried about holding jobs, that news provides little comfort.

Go down BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's list of the state's largest 100 employers and you'll find the names of companies that are downsizing. IBM cut 20,000 workers worldwide in 1991; Sears, 33,000 nationwide. Over five years, Cone Mills has reduced its work force to 8,000 from 11,000.

Trimming back is nothing new to American industry. "During the early '80s, when we had two recessions back to back, manufacturing employment was cut substantially, a lot of which never came back," says Greg Sampson, labor-market information director at the N.C. Employment Security Commission. "As you move through the decade, there was a lot less fat to cut."

When companies started wielding the ax in this recession, however...