Vision Credit Education, Inc.

Citigroup has announced a reduction in its workforce of 53,000 jobs, bringing its total employment base down to about 300,000. The move is designed to cut labor costs dramatically to stem losses due to both mortgage backed assets and credit card defaults.

While the news has been made public, a meeting is planned internally to update all Citigroup employees. This town hall style meeting will be led by CEO Vikram Pandit. Citigroup had previously announced 22,000 job cuts, which will have a net result of 75,000 job cuts at Citigroup.

The move comes on the heels of another decision made by Citigroup to raise the interest rates of 2 or 3 percentage points to approximately 20% of its cardholders. Although Citi is the first to announce this action, other card issuers are likely to follow with their own interest rate increases.

Citigroup is not the only financial institution that is slashing jobs. Morgan Stanley and UBS have each announced job cuts of their own in an attempt to reduce spending.

Job cuts alone may not be enough to stem losses, but it should help reduce the massive losses that financial institutions have been posting. Citigroup has posted four consecutive quarterly losses, and an estimated $20 billion in total losses in the past year.

Chairman Win Bischoff said that job cuts “will fall particularly heavily on London and New York.”