Technology firms across the United States announced more than 84,000 job cuts in the first quarter, the largest quarterly total since the fourth quarter of 2002, when 133,511 job cuts were announced, global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said this morning in a release.

According to the report, 84,217 technology jobs were eliminated during the first quarter, up 27 percent from the 66,312 job cuts that were announced in the previous quarter, and nearly five times higher than the 17,345 that were announced last year during this time.

The firm expects a large number of job cuts in the future, due in great measure to merger and acquisition activity.

“We may start to see an increase in merger activity among tech firms, as they attempt to gain an economic and competitive foothold in this downturn,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “In most of these mergers, the first step taken to offset the cost of the merger is to eliminate redundant positions.”

Challenger noted the potential IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. merger is a prime example of how a large-scale merger could eliminate thousands of jobs. However, IBM withdrew its offer to buy Sun for about $7 billion this weekend, clouding the prospects for a deal that would shake up the computing industry, the Associated Press reported.

But despite the increases, the firm said that the current job cuts remain well below the levels that were reached during the dot-com bust, which resulted in 1,163,742 job cuts in 2001 and 2002. During that period, an average of 145,467 job cuts were announced each quarter.