If you happen to know anyone who’s employed by MySpace, today’s a good day to keep them in your thoughts.  MySpace CEO Mike Jones confirmed that heavy layoffs will occur, with 47 percent of the company’s employees (or roughly 500 people) due to be affected.

While it’s hard to imagine that half of MySpace’s workforce contributed absolutely nothing, and it’s extra suspicious that Jones made his announcement at a time when the Verizon/iPhone hoopla was distracting everyone, the CEO did try to indicate that MySpace is in good shape now.

Rumors concerning the possibility of drastic layoffs at MySpace first surfaced on New Year’s Eve, and it seems that the start of 2011 hasn’t improved the situation.  A new report holds the percentage of employees who may be affected between 33 and 50, and even indicates that the layoffs could occur in the next few weeks.

Shareholders may grumble, but there’s perhaps a bit of good news regarding the four percent of Yahoo’s employees who were laid off last week.  Yahoo’s calculated the pre-tax cost of the layoffs at somewhere in the neighborhood of $35 million.

At a time when people should be decorating their offices in a festive manner, it seems that a large number of Yahoo employees will instead have to carry away their belongings in cardboard boxes.  Multiple sources indicate that Yahoo intends to conduct another round of layoffs in December.

Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hit a pessimistic note by saying that he expected to see IT spending growth, but not recovery.  Now, it seems that Microsoft is about to prove it’s still in recession mode, as rumors of imminent layoffs are circulating.

MySpace announced Tuesday it will cut 300 jobs from its international staff and close at least 4 of its offices outside of the United States.

The move comes after an announcement last week that the social networking site was cutting its staff by nearly 30 percent.

MySpace’s international staff will be cut from 450 employees to about 150 with offices in London, Berlin, and Sydney becoming the regional hubs for the company’s international operations.

MySpace just announced that it is cutting its staff by nearly 30%. The company says this is part of a plan to restucture itself into a more innovative, efficient, and entrepreneurial business.

A significant number of MySpace employees may soon have to acquire cardboard moving boxes and update their resumes.  Although nothing’s certain, there have been several indications that a large wave of layoffs will hit in the near future. 

Update: VentureBeat reports: "We’ve learned that Massive, the company’s in-game advertising business, suffered something like 75 percent layoffs."

As you may know, Yahoo has cut over 600 jobs. The company’s popular photo sharing service Flickr looks to be among the Yahoo properties directly affected by this.

It’s tough to keep things quiet these days, especially with all that Twittering. Unnamed engineers drowning their overhead redundancy woes over the weekend passed on the news—with documentation—to a Berkeley grad student Bay Area executive that Google was trying to keep engineer layoffs out of the press.

Google submitted a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month that has just recently come to light. The reason for this delay is perhaps that it was filed via paper-only.

Employees in the U.S. seem to overwhelmingly share a "it won’t happen to me" attitude when it comes to losing jobs. Glassdoor.com has released results from a survey, which found that 4 out of 5 employees have no concerns about being laid off in the next six months.

GlassDoor breaks it down into two categories – companies that have reported upcoming layoffs, and companies that have not:

Are the rumors true? Reports have emerged that Redmond based tech giant Microsoft is set to slash its global workforce, as the pressure of the current financial crisis takes hold.

Last month, speculation started that Microsoft was looking to cut its staff early in the New Year, with unconfirmed reports suggesting several thousands of employees would start 2009 looking for new jobs.

Google’s frenemy Yahoo is laying off many people and provides a detailed guideline for management on how to tell employees the news. The guideline, which was leaked to Valleywag, contains instructions like the following:

It feels like 2000 all over again with daily reports of layoffs and firings from Internet and tech companies. Fourtunately, these belt tightening measures this time seem to be aimed at preventing financial disaster rather than a precurser to massive business closures.

Here are today’s reports from around the web:

- Tucows cuts employees by roughly 15%. (MORE)

Yahoo is expected to announce some job cuts tomorrow as they announce their third quarter earnings. The number of cuts has been rumored to be anywhere between 1,000 and 3,500. The company is no stranger to letting go chunks of employees, and with current economic conditions, it is no surprise that they are at it again. Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org writes:

If a recent leak of information is true, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and board chairman Roy Bostock are looking worse and worse. Remember all that grandstanding last spring about employee severances and retention packages when Microsoft’s offer to buy was still on the table?

Remember the nasty letters between Carl Icahn and Bostock about that and how Bostock seemed to be looking out for employees and Icahn said it was just a poison pill to add a couple of billion to the price tag and dissuade Microsoft?

‘Member?

What once was considered an Internet powerhouse, seems to be dwindling away. AOL is getting rid of (or has already) more than 50 of its projects according to Silicon Alley Insider. We knew about AOL Journals and AOL Hometown, but this list is huge.

The dead projects fall into a number of categories including video, audio, messaging, social, toolbars, desktop, safety, mobile, and email. Check SIA’s article for the complete list.

The stock market has stopped doing 200-point dives, and for a time, it seemed like another hallmark of recessions had also become rare.  Unfortunately, some "restructuring" has once again occurred, and employees of Nielsen Business Media were the ones to be affected.

No April Fools joke here, as Dell plans to shut down its manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, as part of a broader series of job cuts.