Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 28: Layoffs at Accenture, plus other disasters in the making

Even "green-collar" jobs or "bright-collar" jobs or whatever the hell they call the smarty-pants consulting jobs that seem to employ about 99.5 percent of D.C.-area residents these days aren't safe in this economy. Accenture is laying off nearly 100 employees at its Reston office.

The New York-based consulting giant, located at 11951 Freedom Drive, will cut 98 workers Jan. 2, according to a notice filed by the company with Virginia.

Combined with its D.C. office, Accenture (NYSE: ACN) employs around 3,000 in the area and works with many federal departments and technology corridor clients in area.

“It’s important to know we are doing everything we can to find other employment opportunities within the company for these folks,” said Peter Soh, of corporate communications for Accenture. “We are a large global consulting firm and it’s our normal business practice to constantly evaluate our workforce and make sure it meets the changing needs of our clients. From time to time we find we need to rebalance our workforce. That’s what this action is here.”

He says the layoff is “not a reflection of the marketplace.”

Riiiiiight. Meanwhile, Reston will be home to a summit to save another industry in crisis -- and this one doesn't involve spastically dancing open house signs.

The American Press Institute (API) will host an invitation-only, closed-door "summit conference" Nov. 13 in which 50 CEO-level executives will ponder ways to revive the newspaper business.

The one-day conference at API's Reston, Va., headquarters will be "a facilitated discussion of concrete steps the industry can take to reverse its declines in revenue, profit and shareholder value."

Good luck with that! At this point, that's kind of like holding a facilitated discussion of concrete steps the passengers of the Titanic could have taken to rearrange deck chairs to "reverse declines in the ship's buoyancy."