Macy’s (M) is cutting back again. The struggling department store chain said Wednesday it will ax 2,300 management jobs in a bid to slash costs. The move comes just over a month after Macy’s gave workers in some underperforming stores mostly out West a very unhappy New Year’s surprise.

Now, Macy’s will cut 950 jobs in Minneapolis, 850 in St. Louis and 750 in Seattle as it reduces its regional hubs to three from six. Macy’s will also add 250 jobs overseeing new, smaller regional buying groups. The Cincinnati-based company said it made the move in a bid to “accelerate sales growth in existing locations by ensuring that core customers surrounding each Macy’s store find merchandise assortments, size ranges, marketing programs and shopping experiences that are custom-tailored to their needs.”

Still, the move raises as many questions as it answers. Wednesday move leaves three regional operating groups - now called Macy’s East, Macy’s Central and Macy’s West - while eliminating Macy’s North, Macy’s Midwest and Macy’s Northwest. But why not just eliminate all the regional groups?

Update: A spokesman says that is “a bridge we haven’t crossed” and explains that the divisions that were consolidated were smaller groups that will be “easily accommodated” into the much larger East, Central and West groups. “There is still a need to have regional buying,” he says, adding that there is “no evidence” that further consolidation of the regional groups would be productive for the company.

Meanwhile, Macy’s said sales in established stores tumbled 7.1% in January - a swoon that has Gimme Credit analyst Carol Levenson wondering how bad the numbers will be at other retailers. “We note that last year at this time the company forecast same-store sales for fiscal 2007 to be up 2% to up 3.5%, but in fact they were down 1.3%,” Levenson wrote of Macy’s, “and the tendency as for most retailers is to be overly optimistic.” That could mean some nasty numbers Thursday morning.

A painful restructuring is starting to pay off at Whirlpool (WHR). The Benton Harbor, Mich., appliance maker posted stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday, helped by solid overseas sales and cost control. Whirlpool made $187 million, or $2.38 a share, from continuing operations for the quarter ended Dec. 31, up from the year-ago $133 million, or $1.67 a share. Sales rose 7% from a year ago to $5.3 billion. Wall Street analysts had been looking for a profit of $2.15 a share on sales of $5.27 billion. The solid numbers come two years after Whirlpool closed its acquisition of rival Maytag - a deal that has given the company room to boost profits by cutting thousands of jobs. Earlier this week, Whirlpool said it would cut 1,250 more jobs in closing plants in Tennessee and Mexico. And for the rest of this year, workers can look forward to more of the same. “We expect the macroeconomic challenges related to material cost increases and lower U.S. and European demand to continue in 2008,” said CEO Jeff Fettig. “We will offset increasing material and oil-related costs through cost-based pricing adjustments and productivity improvements. In addition, we are adjusting our cost structure to the lower expected industry demand levels.” Sounds like the same old spin from Whirlpool.

The news keeps getting worse at Sprint (S). The struggling wireless telco suffered its worst quarter yet for customer defections, saying a staggering 683,000 post-paid users headed for the door in the fourth quarter. Sprint’s churn, reflecting the rate of monthly subscriber loss, rose to 2.3 percent, which is more than double the rates recently posted at the fastest-growing big carrier, Verizon Wireless.

Worse yet, Sprint expects these trends to get even worse, which is why it’s firing 4,000 workers and closing 125 stores. Sprint last year set plans to cut 5,000 jobs as then-CEO Gary Forsee pledged to get Sprint’s user numbers moving in the right direction again. But he failed, leading to his departure last year. The management change aside, Sprint’s health has turned so ill that the company is now threatening Wall Street with a big writedown of the goodwill taken on in its acquisition of Nextel a few years back - in effect, a belated recognition that the company badly overpaid in the $35 billion deal. No wonder Sprint shares are poised to set another five-year low when trading opens Friday.