As we reported earlier this week, Home Depot is shuttering all 34 of its high-end EXPO Design Centers, a business that “has not performed well financially and is not expected to anytime soon,” according to the company. EXPO features pricey design and décor items for kitchen, bath, and outdoor living. All told, various cuts announced by the company flush 7,000 jobs – 2 percent of the workforce – and imposes a salary freeze for all officers. Home Depot says it will offer severance pay, earned bonuses, and other benefits to employees who lose their jobs. At least that’s something.

Tens of thousands of other workers also got pink slips on Monday. Caterpillar (trucks and heavy equipment), Sprint Nextel (communications), Texas Instruments (technology) and at least eight other firms vanquished more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the globe. Another victim, Quiksilver, the hip outdoor clothier that caters to the youth market, indicated that no one would be spared in its quest to cut expenses by 10 percent – or $40 million a year. Two hundred jobs are being cut from top to bottom, and even the executive management team has to take a pay cut.

Speaking of not being spared, luxury goods sellers, usually the last to feel the pinch in a downturn, are being squeezed, too.

On Jan. 15, Chairman and CEO Steve Sadove of Saks Fifth Avenue somberly noted, "Our financial performance is increasingly being challenged by some of the most difficult economic conditions our company has faced in its 84-year history.” To cope, Saks is doing away with 1,100 jobs (corporate and store positions), about 9 percent of its staff; eliminating merit-based wage increases for all employees; suspending 401(k) plan company matching contributions for at least of one year; and trimming pensions. So far, no store closings are scheduled.

Then there’s Tiffany, the ritzy Fifth Avenue jeweler. The chain is coming off an dreadful holiday season with sales at the company’s U.S. stores down 35 percent from 2007. Even before executives knew how horrid the season would turn out, management had announced plans to jettison staff in light of reduced consumer demand and to trim capital expenditures as a result of the recession. Tiffany will reveal its year-end sales results on March 23.

At least those companies aren’t going belly up, as have Circuit City, Sharper Image, Steve and Barry’s, Mervyn’s, Linens n’ Things, KB Toys, and many others. Still, the list of familiar names that recently announced retrenchment plans is growing. Among them:

• Office Depot – The office products giant is in the process of closing 112 stores that aren’t meeting expectations. At the same time the chain will open 20 new locations, down from a previous estimate of 40. Office Depot also plans to close six of its 33 distribution facilities to streamline operations.

• Charming Shoppes – The parent name may not be familiar, but many of the corporate brands are: Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherine’s Plus Size, and Petite Sophisticate. The company, which is in the midst of a restructuring and cost-cutting initiative to offset disappointing sales, earlier this month announced a hiring freeze and 225 job reductions, mostly sales positions. That bad news came on top of word from the company at Thanksgiving that it was shutting down its Lane Bryant Woman catalog operation, and closing as many as 250 stores companywide by January 2010.

• Phillips -Van Heusen – Last week, the company, which is the leading seller of dress shirts in department stores, said it was doing away with 175 stores and approximately 250 salaried positions, representing more than 10 percent of the company's salaried workforce, and 150 hourly-wage neckwear manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles. In fact, the restructuring entails doing away with the company’s domestic shirt production entirely. There goes another industry overseas.

The litany of negative news is enough to make me head over to the nearest Starbucks for a quick caffeine fix. But, oh yeah, they’re cutting back, too. Today, the company informed latte lovers that it’s closing 200 more coffee shops -- on top of the 600 previously targeted for closure in the U.S. this year --  because business is down. Gone with those stores will be 6,000 barista and other in-store jobs.

So instead of getting a coffee, I contacted David Bodamer, editor of Retail Traffic magazine, which provides independent research about real estate, retailing, and development for industry, to put all the cuts and closings into perspective. 

“The majority of store closings typically get announced during the first 3 months of the year. So the numbers we're seeing so far aren't too out of line with that,” said Bodamer. “Even in the strong years we had first quarters with more than 3,000 closings announced. By my count, we're up to potentially 1,434 closings--that's if the retailers that filed for bankruptcy close all stores. That's not a given at this point, but that is how things played out with Circuit City, Linens n' Things and Steve and Barry's. All originally filed for Chapter 11 and said they'd keep stores open and then a few months later all eventually liquidated.

“I think we'll continue to see a burst of closing announcements throughout the first quarter as retailers pick through the wreckage of the 2008 holiday shopping season. However, if consumer spending doesn't pick up during the balance of the year-- and NRF's (National Retail Federation's) figures released today seem to indicate it won't pick up -- then we could continue to see retailers fall by the wayside throughout 2009. Some experts we've talked to estimate that we could see up to 12,000 chain store closings in 2009--basically double what we saw in 2008. To me, that qualifies as ‘getting worse before it gets better.’ "

Bodamer expects to see some major names making business adjustments, closing stores, even liquidating, but wouldn’t speculate as to which ones are most vulnerable.

For more details on the latest retail closures and cutbacks, check out Bodamer’s highly informative Retail Traffic blog.