Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.

For a while there it would look like the first consecutive weeks without layoffs since this time last year (by our reckoning, you have to go back to the weeks ending October 9 and October 2, 2008). Alas, one firm did come through with staff layoffs, about which more after the jump.

As usual, we begin with the US macroeconomic picture, and as usual, it ain’t pretty. For the week, the S&P 500 was down about 2%. That was the second straight week of losses, and the DJIA had its biggest weekly decline in three months. 263,000 net jobs were lost in September and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, despite perhaps the technical end of the recession. As with the stock market, bad results are one thing, but results worse than expectations are another, and that was the case here. Consensus estimates were net losses of 175,000, so the actual results were way short. August’s revised numbers were slightly better than original reports, though.

The poor results are creating pessimism around when things will start to turn around:

[T]he report also buttressed fears that economic expansion would be weak and hesitant, with scarce paychecks and economic anxiety remaining prominent features of American life well into next year.

“This is a weak report,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. “The rate of job loss has tapered off, but we still haven’t reached the point where businesses are willing to hire.”

Could this create political difficulties for the president?

While the cutting edge firms have moved onto cutting salaries, there are still firms that are getting through their layoffs.

Yesterday, Above the Law learned that Wildman Harrold decided to go through another round of cuts. Here is the firm statement:

We have reduced our associate ranks by 10 and our secretarial staff by 7. The individuals affected by these reductions are all high quality employees and professionals, who have made valuable contributions to our firm. Our diverse profile as a firm remains unchanged by these departures.

Back in January, Wildman laid off approximately ten attorneys.

Layoffs have definitely slowed down this month, but they haven’t stopped. But with summer associates on the way, hopefully forced attrition is almost at an end.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Wildman Harrold Makes Deep Cuts

Wildman Harrold, a Chicago based law firm of over 200 lawyers (and an ATL commenter favorite) has laid off 10 lawyers.

The firm has confirmed that there were “approximately” 5 income partners and 5 associates let go. Our tipsters also report that eight staffers were also let go, but the firm did not confirm that information.

One tipster reports that Wildman’s managing partner had previously promised that there would be no layoffs at the firm:

The Managing Partner, Robert Shuftan, assured associates a month and a half ago that the firm would not be conducting layoffs unless something “catastrophic’ happened to the firm.

Another tipster reports:

The laid off attorneys were told that the moves were necessary because of the current economic climate.

But the firm contends that the layoffs were part of its annual review process.

Read the full firm statement after the jump.