More than one-third of all layoffs in September, 37 percent, were in the housing sector, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., as the industry faces a deep slump. However, job cuts overall were 28.5 percent lower than in September 2006, the Associated Press reported.

Layoffs in the housing-related sector, which includes mortgage lenders, construction companies and real estate firms, totaled 26,465 last month, while layoffs overall were 71,739.

Job-cut announcements so far this year reached 587,584, or 8.1 percent fewer than in the first nine months of 2006. Seventeen percent of the cuts were attributed to the housing market slowdown. In the same period last year, housing-related layoffs accounted for less than 2 percent of all job cuts.

U.S. mortgage companies accounted for 82 percent of all job losses in the financial sector, with nearly 52,000 of the 70,000 mortgage job cuts this year happening in the past two months.