CHICAGO _ Sears Holdings Corp. has laid off about 220 corporate employees, effective immediately.
Most of those employees worked at the company's Hoffman Estates headquarters, and the cuts affected various business units and roles across the organization, Sears spokesman Howard Riefs said Wednesday in an email.
The layoffs are part of an ongoing restructuring effort at Sears, and they follow rounds of cuts in March and June, both mostly in Hoffman Estates, totaling more than 500 jobs. The company said it will provide severance and transition assistance to eligible employees.
Sears declined to say how many people remain at its corporate headquarters. The company told the Tribune following the June layoffs that it had fallen below a minimum of 4,250 employees in Hoffman Estates and its Loop satellite office needed to secure state tax breaks. The state agreed to the tax incentives in 2011 after Sears threatened to leave Illinois.
The retailer told the state in January 2015 that it had 5,444 employees in Hoffman Estates and the Loop.
"The company will continue to take decisive actions to restructure our operations, targeting at least $200 million in cost savings on an annualized basis in 2018 unrelated to store closures," Riefs said.
The struggling department store chain said it made "significant progress" in its restructuring last year, hitting its target of $1.25 billion in cost savings.
But after another holiday season of steep sales declines, Sears said this month it was taking steps to strengthen its financial position, including making more cost cuts and closing 103 stores by April, in addition to 63 it had previously said would close after the holidays.
At the close of trading Wednesday, Sears' shares were down 28.2 percent since the start of the year.
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