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New York, NY — Internet firms continued to lay off people in December, a new study released Wednesday said. 

Dot-com companies eliminated 10,459 positions from their payrolls, up from 8,789 in November, for a total of 41,515 since last December, according to the report by outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. 

``The two halves of 2000 were like night and day for dot-commers,' the company's chief executive officer, John A. Challenger, said. ``In the first six months, all you heard about were job fairs, lavish recruiting parties and after-hours mixers where would-be entrepreneurs hoped to meet free-spending venture capitalists. Now, pink-slip parties are the rage.'

The Internet sector cut a total of 5,097 jobs between January and June of this year. From July through December, 36,177 reductions were made. 

Most of the job losses occurred at dot-com companies that specialize in services such as consulting, financial and information. Internet retail firms saw the second-largest number of cuts. 

In recent weeks, companies such as consultancy Scient Corp. and online grocer HomeGrocer.com, which is being acquired by Webvan Group Inc., have shed jobs. 

But Challenger said he was pessimistic that Internet companies would stop losing jobs any time soon. 

``My guess is there's more pain to come,' he said. ``As we hit January and February, they're going to sit down with their investors and post-mortem what happened. I think more are going to decide to close their doors.'

News, photos provided by Internet Wire.

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