Okay, it's official: we're really sick of this whole "struggling economy" thing. And it wasn't any one thing that finally pushed us over the edge and suddenly, bam, we were sick of it, but rather a slow realization that, even to drama hounds like us, the magic is simply gone. There's just nothing particularly interesting about it anymore, you know? Maybe the first six times we heard about massive layoffs at Motorola there was something of the car crash "can't look away" factor at work, but really, these days anything about how the economy is still in turmoil is about as engrossing as a roundtable discussion on the difference between beige and ecru. It practically sends us straight to sleep-- and we can't sleep, dagnabbit, because we've got a show to do, here.

Still, when signs of potential economic hardship hit Apple, we suppose we've got to mention something about it. A moment of silence, please, then, for any (former) Apple employees who may have been pink-slipped this month; a CNET article indicates (sans detail) that, a few weeks ago, "a very small number of jobs" was trimmed from Cupertino's Great Tree of Gainful Employment. Think Secret claims that the cuts totaled about sixty and included members of the "Development Executive team" and the educational division. We wish the best of luck to those who suddenly found themselves unemployed in what we understand to be a really heinous job market. Interview tip: try not to mention that you have recurring nightmares involving the late Shari Lewis, her puppet Lambchop, and a leaf blower. Seriously, just trust us on this one.

Meanwhile, for the rest of you out there, it's not worth getting too worked up over these job cuts, since Apple's been doing this for a while, now-- trimming a few jobs here and there for the purposes of "restructuring." We heard way back in February that about fifty more layoffs were coming, and the axe fell in April; granted, we spent a good chunk of the year since then completely out of the loop, but we don't recall any other layoff reports after that, other than the ones at the retail stores six months ago.

Apple, for its part, still claims that despite the handful of layoffs, the company is hiring quickly enough that overall headcount is growing. We don't have a very recent sample to go by, but it's true that, according to Yahoo! Finance, Apple's total number of employees had increased to 9,603 at some point this year, up from 8,568 as reported last December. So once again, this doesn't look like a frenzied hack job done in desperation. Presumably we won't know for sure until Apple's next 10-Q filing, but as far as we can tell, there's no need to panic-- yet. That is, unless you really want to.