Resigned, retired, retreated, released

Instead of tallying job losses today, let's count something else.

There's not much sympathy to be found these days for the CEOs of the world. So several of you might be happy to note that, although the pace is slightly below that of last year, some 115 chief execs bit the dust in May. (That means only that they left their post.) That's a 47 percent rise over April, and the biggest number since December. The total, which includes those who stepped away voluntarily (or retired) and those who were "pushed," stands at 502 for the year.

Challenger, Grey & Christmas, the source of this intel, calls 2009 a "roller coaster year for CEO turnover," with successive monthly crests and troughs. (That's even carried over into the yearly results -- in 2005 and 2007, the total was near 1,340, in 2006 and 2008, 1,480.) And strangely, the sector with the most departures is…health care, one of the few areas that's been relatively low-profile in terms of job reductions. The government/non-profit arena was the CEO turnover runner-up.

--Posted by Todd Obolsky, Vault Staff Writer