Ron Johnson (AP)
However you’re counting the numbers, they hurt.
JCPenney revealed in a regulatory filing yesterday that it finished its fiscal year ended Feb. 2 with 116,000 employees — a whopping 43,000 less than a year earlier.
That’s a slashing of 27 percent — even steeper than the company’s disastrous revenue decline of 24.8 percent for the same period.
It’s also more than twice the figure of 19,000 job cuts that Chief Executive Ron Johnson testified to under oath earlier this month, when asked during the company’s trial with Macy’s and Martha Stewart how many Penney employees had lost their jobs on his watch.
Penney officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about the employment figures, which were disclosed late yesterday in the company’s annual 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Johnson, who has slashed the company’s workforce as part of his bold turnaround bid that has backfired badly, said repeatedly last year that Penney employed 134,000 workers when he took the helm in November 2011.
As such, yesterday’s reported payroll of 116,000 workers represents a headcount drop of 18,000, roughly in line with Johnson’s testimony.
Penney officials have maintained that last year’s year-end figure of 159,000 was inflated by an unusually large number of seasonal hires.
The company sowed further confusion in November, when during a TV interview with Charlie Rose on CBS it reported that it had just 100,000 employees.
Indeed, rumors have circulated in recent months that the company’s rank and file has dipped below 100,000.
Questions about Penney’s headcount began to crop up not long after Johnson arrived at JCP from Apple.
In January 2012, Johnson denied talk that he laid off thousands of full-time workers and forced many more into part-time positions.
Yet at the time, documents reviewed by The Post showed that Penney had offered severance packages to 4,700 full-time employees.
Last spring, some remaining full-time employees complained that if they didn’t take the severance packages they were forced to work odd hours that conflicted with other responsibilities.
Meanwhile, the retailer began to fill responsibilities held by full-time workers to part-timers.
In its filing, Penney said it lopped $386 million from its expenses last year by cutting salaries, benefits and compensation incentives. Nevertheless, those costs still soared as a percentage of sales, to 34.7 percent from 29.6 percent in 2011, as revenue tumbled.
In yesterday’s filing, the company admitted to “a substantial amount of turnover of officers and line managers with specific knowledge relating to us, our operations and our industry that could be difficult to replace.”
That poses the risk of a vicious cycle taking hold if performance doesn’t improve, the company warned.
“We now operate with significantly fewer individuals who have assumed additional duties and responsibilities and we could have additional workforce reductions in the future,” Penney said in the filing.