Telecoms giant BT's plans to slash 10,000 jobs from its global workforce is set to hit recruiters hard. A BT spokesperson told Recruiter 6,000 of the redundancies would be agency staff, consultants and contractors.

An agency source, close to BT, told Recruiter: "They [BT] have been chopping contractors for some time now, if they have just announced a figure they've obviously done the maths and they know how many they need to cut."

It is estimated between 6,000 and 8,000 jobs will be lost in. The company employs 160,000 people worldwide, of which 50,000 are employed indirectly as contractors or through agencies.

BT's spokesperson said the company has cut 4,000 positions so far and plans to make the further cuts by the end of the financial year, 31 March 2009. The news comes after the company’s half-year results showed a fall in second quarter pre-tax profits of 11%.

Announcing its results, BT said its Open Reach, BT Retail, BT Wholesale divisions were doing well, but that BT Global Services was underperforming.

Ian Livingston, chief executive of BT, said: "Profits in BT Global Services are simply not good enough and we are taking decisive action to put matters right. We have appointed Hanif Lalani as the new chief executive of BT Global Services and he will
continue to grow the business while reducing the cost base."

The source added: "For BT it's probably a smaller cut than some of the banks have been making recently. Having said all of that the telecoms market is a technology sector, it is going to keep growing and it is going to come back in the future. We understand that this is a short-term reaction to circumstances nobody
can control."

The BT spokesperson said the company hoped to make the redundancies on a voluntary basis, where possible.