The Time magazine in its report published online has named Cisco, Visa, education company Apollo, cigarettes firm Altria, cellular operator Verizon, Corinthian College and pharma entity Amgen in the list of 10 companies which are defying the trend.

“The other firms included have large amounts of cash on their balance sheets and have elected to use the slow economy to develop new products and services to take share away from financially weaker competitors,” the Time said.

On search engine giant Google, which had fired a small number of people last year, the magazine said, “if the company wants to control personnel costs, it can simply stop hiring.”

About Apple, the magazine said because its success is based on creating new products, improving old ones and aggressive marketing, it would need all the people who work at the company and perhaps more.

“The company has $24 billion in cash and securities and adds to that every quarter. Apple refuses to make acquisitions, preferring to create and market its own products,” Time said.

Further, Apple would also not lay people off because its CEO Steve Jobs would have to admit he had made a bad decision and that the entity would not appear to be perfect, the magazine added.