According to an article in the Star-Telegram, Google Inc . announced that it is closing three engineering offices and cutting 100 recruiters and 700 engineers from its payroll. The job losses comes as a surprise from a company known for its loyalty to employees and generous employee perks.

This is what Google had to say:

“Given the state of the economy, we recognized that we needed fewer people focused on hiring,” Laszlo Bock, a Google vice president, wrote in a blog posting late Wednesday announcing the layoffs.

Fewer people focused on hiring? That’s a serious sign of future job losses when a company like Google begins to admit that they won’t need a certain amount of recruiters because they don’t plan to be hiring anytime soon. Why? Because their sales are actually decreasing or at least slowing down in critical parts of their business, Google has been forced to implement the job losses.

As consumers shop less online and advertising budgets shrink, Google’s ad revenue has been growing at a slower pace, leading the company to cut back…

People are shopping less online and offline because they’re experiencing foreclosure , job losses, reduced pay and often bankruptcy. Every American needs to keep their eyes on these developments. Google employs over 20,000 people worldwide and I have a sneaky suspicion that this won’t be the last of the job loss announcements from them. If you work for a Google-like firm that depended on the boom housing and credit markets to grow and expand, keep watch for possible job losses. Don’t wait until you get your pink slip to talk to a bankruptcy attorney about how you can protect your assets in case of a unexpected job loss.