Employers announced 74,393 job cuts in June, the first time since September 2008 that the monthly tally was less than 100,000, according to figures from Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

The figure was 9 percent lower than June 2008 and 33 percent lower than May 2009. The number of announced job cuts has declined each month since reaching a seven-year high of 241,749 in January and is down 45 percent in the second quarter from the 578,510 cuts announced in the first quarter.

“We typically see a decline in job cuts in the second quarter,” said company CEO John Challenger. “In fact, it is the slowest job-cut quarter historically. However, this recent drop-off may be indicative of an overall downward trend in layoff activity. We will probably see job-cut activity increase from current levels in the months ahead, but job cuts in the second half of the year are likely to be lower than the first half.”

The largest portions of the job cuts announced in the first half of 2009 were in the government and automotive sectors. With 221,798 in combined job cuts, those areas contributed about one-fourth of the 896,675 cuts announced in the first six months of the year.

Meanwhile, job cuts in financial services, industrial-goods manufacturing, computer and consumer products were down.