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.

A form the company filed with the SEC explained, "In connection with the worldwide workforce reduction, the Company expects to incur pre-tax cash charges of $33 million to $38 million for severance pay expenses and related cash expenditures."  That should add up to some very nice exit packages.

Then Yahoo also shared something to help take the bite out of things for investors.  The form continued, "The estimated pre-tax cash charges are expected to be offset by a $4 million to $6 million credit related to stock-based compensation expense reversals."

Anyway, most of the severance charges should show up on paper during the fourth quarter of this year, and Yahoo will finish officially recognizing them before the end of the first quarter of 2011.

A quick note regarding the company’s short-term performance: Yahoo’s stock is down 0.98 percent this morning, which puts it in significantly worse shape than the Dow (down 0.36 percent) and Nasdaq (down 0.20 percent).