PC Connection at the DHL Commerce Park in Wilmington has laid off 12 to 14 employees in a companywide cutback due to the bad economy.

Throughout the entire company, about 100 positions were eliminated, according to Brad Mousseau, senior vice president of human resources at corporate headquarters in Merrimack, N.H. The 100 laid-off employees represent about 6 percent of the company’s workforce, he said.

The move was necessitated because of the economic downturn, said Mousseau.

“Our sales were lower than expected and we needed to bring our cost structure back in line,” he said.

Mousseau said he could not say whether the layoffs will be permanent or temporary. If the business turns around, said Mousseau, the company would gladly take the laid-off workers back. But he said basically nobody can predict what’s going to happen.

The workers will receive severance pay tied to their length of employment. As for health benefits, Mousseau said under the new stimulus package, all COBRA benefits are subsidized so that the employee would pay 35 percent of what the COBRA rate is. Mousseau called that “a much better deal for them” than the straight COBRA rate which has been much criticized for being too expensive to provide health insurance to the people it’s meant to serve — the unemployed.

The subsidy continues for nine of the 18 months that an unemployed worker is eligible for COBRA coverage, he said.

Basically laid-off workers need to sign up for COBRA to get the COBRA subsidy, according to Mousseau.

“It’s always difficult when you have to make a decision to eliminate jobs. This is extremely difficult for us to do. But it’s something the company felt we had to do to get our costs in line,” he said in a phone interview.

Mousseau did have some good news to convey. He said there are no plans to relocate PC Connection’s Wilmington distribution facility because of DHL’s decision to exit the domestic U.S. express shipping market.

Mousseau said the local news in New Hampshire recently showed news footage from Wilmington when Feed the Children was in town to deliver food.

“Which made this an even more difficult decision for the Wilmington layoffs. We hope the area comes back. We hope the best for everybody out there,” he said.