Reports are circulating that the ailing Cisco networking company may soon layoff between 5,000 and 10,000 of its workers. If the upper end of that range is reached, that would represent 14 percent of its total workforce.

Such a mass culling of jobs would be one of the largest such corporate layoffs in recent memory.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the once-powerful Cisco would eliminate 10,000 workers, as it desperately seeks to hike profits and remain relevant.

Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, said 7,000 Cisco employees would be let go by the end of next month, while the other 3,000 would be forced out via early retirement packages.

Earlier, an analyst at Gleacher & Co. told Reuters he was expecting “only” 5,000 job losses.

Regardless, Cisco’s (reportedly) planned job cuts are probably the largest one-slice job cull since Citigroup said it would lay off an astounding 53,000 workers in mid November 2008 (at the height of the global financial crisis, just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers). Citigroup sid at the time that the slashed jobs would reduce headcount by approximately 20 percent from its peak of 375,000 employees as of year-end 2007.

At the time consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas said Citigroup’s measure was the second-biggest job cut ever undertaken by any company. The largest was in 1993 when IBM jettisoned 60,000 people in one fell swoop.

Also in January 1993, retailer Sears announced 50,000 job cuts.

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