WASHINGTON (AP) -- Businesses slashed inventories for a fifth straight month in January as they struggle to cope with a deepening recession.

The Commerce Department said Thursday businesses reduced their stockpiles by 1 percent in January, essentially in line with the 1.1 percent drop that analysts had forecast.

The five consecutive declines marked the longest stretch of reductions since inventories were cut for 15 straight months from February 2001 to April 2002, a period that covered the country's last recession.

The 1 percent reduction in inventories followed a revised 1.6 percent drop in December, which was a bigger decline than the 1.3 percent fall originally reported.

Businesses have been struggling to slash stockpiles of goods on shelves and backlots in the face of plunging sales. The inventory declines are being translated into cutbacks in production and rising layoffs as businesses try to trim costs to survive the recession, which already is the longest in a quarter-century.

For January, inventories were reduced at all levels of the supply chain. Manufacturers cut their stockpiles by 0.8 percent, wholesalers reduced inventories by 0.7 percent and retailers cut inventories by the largest amount of all, a drop of 1.7 percent.

Those declines came in response to plunging sales. Total business sales were down 1 percent in January following an even bigger 3.4 percent fall in December. Sales for January were down 14 percent from the same period a year ago as the current recession has sharply reduced deman.

The ratio of inventories to sales remained at 1.43 in January, the same level as December. That means it would take 1.43 months to eliminate existing business stockpiles at the January sales pace. That is the highest level of inventories to sales since it stood at 1.44 in September 2001, the month before the last recession ended.

The current downturn has eliminated a net total of 4.4 million jobs so far. The government last week said that the unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent in February, the highest level in more than 25 years, with another 651,000 jobs lost.

Wholesale inventories make up about 25 percent of all business stockpiles, factories hold another third and retailers hold the rest.

Some economists are forecasting that a severe inventory correction could cut overall economic activity, as measured by gross domestic product, by 1 percent below what it otherwise would be this year.