WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- More bosses played Scrooge last month than during any December on record, as major companies kept up a steady pace of job reductions, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

Big companies announced 166,348 layoffs in December, up 275% from a year earlier, Challenger said Wednesday in its monthly informal survey of job cuts. It's the largest number of announced layoffs in any December since Challenger began tracking them in 1993.

For all of 2008, companies announced a total of 1.2 million job reductions, the most since 2003 and 59% more than in 2007.

The financial sector accounted for about a fourth of the jobs eliminated in December. For all of 2008, the financial services industry announced plans to cut 260,100 jobs, nearly as many as the telecommunications industry cut in 2001 and 2002 as the dot-com bubble collapsed.

The auto industry cut 127,281 jobs in 2008, down from 158,766 eliminated in 2006.

The report comes two days before the Labor Department reports on December's nonfarm payrolls. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expect payrolls to fall 500,000 after the horrendous 533,000 loss in November. It would be the twelfth straight month of job losses, totaling 2.4 million. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 7% from 6.7% in November and 5% in December 2007.

The nonscientific Challenger Gray survey covers announcements of job reductions by major companies, government agencies and nonprofit organizations. The figures, which aren't seasonally adjusted, represent only a small fraction of the workers who lose their jobs each month.

In October, for instance, a total of 1.9 million workers were let go, representing about 1.4% of total employment, according to the latest available data from the Labor Department. By comparison, 2.1 million people quit their jobs voluntarily in October.

The layoff announcements as tracked by Challenger Gray could take place immediately or over time. The reductions could be accomplished by voluntary means such as retirements, buyouts or workers leaving for other jobs, and they could be offset by hiring in other divisions of a company.