0 a situation in which a government, etc. spends less or reduces costs:
In retrenchment, central government may seek to limit the total expenditure of all local governments for economic stabilization.
The downturn in business has resulted in many retrenchments.
Facing retrenchment can be a frightening experience.
1 the act of spending less or reducing costs:
The closures will be the first substantial retrenchment at the store for 10 years.
The big retrenchment in aerospace manufacturing in the early 1990s eventually infected the entire state economy.
Businesses are going for growth, after the retrenchment of recent years.
2 the act of removing a worker from a job as a way of saving the cost of employing them:
The worsening economic environment has seen a sharp retrenchment in electronics sales.
Plans for such a significant fiscal retrenchment come at a vulnerable time for the world economy.
One fifth of the sample had experienced unemployment through retrenchment in the manufacturing industries.
There might be an employee possibly in his own borough, who had been displaced because of nationals retrenchments.
I hope that whatever retrenchments are forced upon us in the future, these four establishments will be kept on.
I said that we must exercise all the retrenchments that are possible—or words to that effect.
We are prepared to make certain retrenchments in the social services.
