21,000 fewer at Berkshire than in 2008

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. reported 21,000 fewer employees than it had at the end of 2008 amid a slump at the firm’s manufacturing and retail units.

Berkshire and its subsidiaries have about 225,000 workers, the Omaha, Neb.-based company said this week in regulatory filings. That’s 8.6 percent fewer than the 246,083 disclosed in the 2008 annual report. Berkshire provided the jobs information in a document tied to its planned $26 billion takeover of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

Buffett didn’t reply to a request, left with an assistant, for comment on the cuts.

Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive officer, oversees more than 70 subsidiaries that sell products including Geico car insurance, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and Dairy Queen ice cream. Profit at the firm’s manufacturing, service and retail businesses plunged by more than half in the first nine months of the year, and Buffett replaced the chief executives of two operating units whose sales suffered in the recession.

“There’s a lot of businesses that have been struggling,” said Paul Howard, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott LLC’s Langen McAlenney division in Hartford, Conn. “I gotta believe all his managers are on their toes trying to figure out what to do.”

David Sokol has announced about 800 job cuts atNetJets since taking the helm at the luxury air travel unit in August. Sokol, who also heads Berkshire’s energy business, was installed by Buffett after NetJets founder Richard Santulli posted about $349 million in first-half losses and left the company. Buffett replaced Marvin Beasley in April as CEO of Berkshire’s Helzberg Diamond Shops.

“When times are good, you’re going to have more people employed than when times are bad,” Buffett, 79, said this month in a video address to the 37,000 railroad employees that Berkshire will take on next year with the completion of the Burlington Northern takeover.

Buffett told shareholders at the firm’s annual meeting in May that he expected more cuts at Berkshire after reductions last year at Clayton Homes Inc., which builds manufactured housing, and brickmaker Acme Building Brands. Berkshire reported its first quarterly loss since 2001 in the first three months of this year. The firm returned to profit in the second and third quarters, helped by an advance in the stock market.

“We will be adding people at some point, but we won’t do it until we see the demand come back,” Buffett said in a September interview conducted by the CEO of Business Wire, the Berkshire unit that posts corporate news releases. “It’ll be a little slow because we don’t want to go through what we did before. Although, I will guarantee you that three years from now, our brick companies, our carpet company, and our insulation company will all be employing far more people than now.”