HONG KONG, China - February 5, 2009 - Panasonic said on Wednesday that it was shedding 15,000 jobs, the second significant layoff in Japan’s electronics industry in less than a week. It was the latest example of how Japanese companies, exporters in particular, were scrambling to cut costs as demand evaporates.

Panasonic, along with Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda, also joined the rapidly lengthening list of companies to sharply revise their full-year outlooks Wednesday, with Panasonic now projecting a net loss of 380 billion yen or $4.2 billion for the year ending March 31, rather than the 30 billion yen profit it forecast on November 27. Mitsubishi expects a net loss of 60 billion yen and Mazda 13 billion.

The speed of the demand downturn in recent months has taken manufacturers and economists by surprise, and forced many companies to sharply lower profit warnings made only months or even weeks ago.

As concerns mount that no tangible improvement will come until late in 2009 at the earliest, companies have intensified their cost cuts: large-scale layoffs like the ones announced by Panasonic on Wednesday and by the computer maker NEC last Friday are likely to become increasingly common. NEC is cutting 20,000 jobs. Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony have all also recently announced thousands of job cuts.

“Business conditions have worsened particularly since last October,” Panasonic said in a statement, “due mainly to the rapid appreciation of the yen, sluggish consumer spending worldwide and ever-intensified price competition.”

During the October-December period, as the impact of the credit squeeze set off by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September began to bite, Panasonic had a net loss of 63.1 billion yen in contrast to a profit of 115.2 billion yen in the period a year earlier.

Panasonic said it was shutting 13 manufacturing sites in Japan and 14 abroad by the end of March. It also plans to lay off about 15,000 workers, or 5 percent of its work force, by March 2010. Half of the cuts will be made in Japan.

Manufacturers of discretionary items - purchases that shoppers can put off or avoid altogether when times get tough - have been especially hard hit as much of the developed world lurched into recession last year.

Such goods include cars, which are piling up unsold as demand plummets faster than manufacturers’ ability to cut back production.

Manufacturers in Japan have suffered the additional burden of the yen’s appreciation against the U.S. dollar over the past year. This has made their products more expensive for consumers in the United States market.

In addition, Japan has a number of electronics makers - Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo and the camera makers Canon and Nikon among them - making for intense competition. The current crisis may intensify pressure for some of these to merge. Panasonic’s plans to swallow the much smaller Sanyo are awaiting regulatory approval.