Starbucks, which has reported a 69 per cent drop in profit for the first fiscal quarter, has announced slashing its headcount by 6,000 and closing of 300 stores.

AOL chief executive Randy Falco sent an internal memo to employees on Wednesday about plans to cut jobs -- 700 or 10 per cent of its workforce.

It also plans to introduce other cost saving measures including freezes on salary increases. One reason for tight position that the companies finds itself is that recession has forces many companies to cut advertisements.

The announcements follow a staggering over 80,000 single-day job-cut declarations made earlier this week by big companies, including Construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar, pharma major Pfizer, telecom firm Sprint Nextel Corp and home improvement retailer Home Depot.

The four companies together account for for 61,000 lay-off announcements.

Further, Dutch banking and insurance group ING said it would slash 7,000 jobs, while another Dutch company Philips announced 6,000 job losses. The electronics major has 2,500 workers in the UK.

Britain's largest steelmaker Corus had said it would cut 3,500 jobs from its global workforce, with more than 2,500 of them in the UK.

On the other hand, some companies are taking extreme measures to avoid job cuts. Virgin Atlantic introduced a pay freeze at all levels yesterday and many companies have already introduced short working weeks and cuts in hours.