Decius wrote:

The rolls of companies nipping at labor costs with measures less drastic than wholesale layoffs include Dell (extended unpaid holiday), Cisco (four-day year-end shutdown), Motorola (salary cuts), Nevada casinos (four-day workweek), Honda (voluntary unpaid vacation time) and The Seattle Times (plans to save $1 million with a week of unpaid furlough for 500 workers). There are also many midsize and small companies trying such tactics.

Three points:
1. Hopefully this non-structural cost cutting is intended to be temporary.
2. If its not, this might be how we get to a 30 hour work week.
3. You can expect companies doing layoffs to continue to lobby Congress for H1B under the pretext that they cannot find people to fill jobs.

The economic crisis is masking a sad fact that will not likely change before economic growth returns and that is health care costs. It's the reason why the Detroit automakers are on their knees and is the root cause on why wage growth over the last 10 years has been negative. The price of employer sponsored insurance has risen 6x since 2000.