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By Jacob Goldstein

When the Pfizer-Wyeth deal was announced earlier this year, Pfizer said it would cut about 15% of the combined companies’ work-force — just under 20,000 jobs. That figure included 8,000 jobs that Pfizer had already said it planned to cut.

When we checked in with Pfizer last week, after the deal closed, a spokesman told us those cuts had already begun on the Pfizer side — but didn’t tell us how many jobs had been eliminated so far.

Pfizer’s third-quarter earnings announcement, released this morning, provides an answer.

The company says its workforce was 75,400 at the end of the third quarter. Pfizer employed about 81,900 people at the end of last year.

That suggests the company has cut 6,500 jobs this year. That’s on top of thousands of jobs the company eliminated in 2008. Those are sobering numbers, but the company’s previous statements suggest more reductions are still to come.

In part because of the cuts, Pfizer reported higher profits compared with the year-earlier period, even as revenue declined.

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