HONG KONG  Nissan Motor joined Toyota, Mazda and Mitsubishi on Monday in forecasting a loss for the current financial year, and announced it was cutting 20,000 workers in one of the most aggressive cutbacks so far by a Japanese company since the start of the global downturn.

The announcement reflected a growing urgency among Japanese manufacturers as it becomes clear that the downturn and the strength of the yen is hitting Japan more severely than expected.

“In every planning scenario we built, our worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded, with the continuing grip on credit and declining consumer confidence being the most damaging factors,” Nissan’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, said in a statement. “Looking forward, our priority remains on protecting our free cash flow and taking swift, adequate and impactful actions to improve our business performance.”

Over the last two weeks, sharp earnings revisions and job cuts have been announced by nearly all of Japan’s best-known companies, including Toyota, Sony, Hitachi, NEC, Hitachi and Panasonic. Toyota Motor, the world’s largest car manufacturer, on Friday forecast a net loss of 350 billion yen, or $3.8 billion, for the year, its first since 1950.