How many jobs lost if Dell goes private?

Let's say Michael Dell and a couple of private-equity companies really can cobble a deal to take Dell (DELL) private.

Investors cheered the prospect on Monday, first reported by Bloomberg News. Dell's shares jumped nearly 13% to $12.29. Dell was the top gainer among Standard & Poor's 500 ($INX) and Nasdaq-100 ($NDX) stocks. The shares were up an additional 26 cents on Tuesday.

Bloomberg said that Dell had been talking to two large buyout firms. Dell toyed with the idea in 2010. A Dell buyout would be probably probably cost $20 a share and might be worth more than $20 billion plus debt.

Who won't be celebrating? A good portion of the 106,700 people who work for Dell worldwide. About 14,000 work in and around Round Rock, Texas, the Austin suburb where Dell is headquartered.

Going private means a company loads up on debt to buy out most of the shareholders. It closes down operations or sells them to free up cash to pay off the debt. And it can mean a great many jobs and benefits will be at risk. They're at risk because Dell's business is tied to the health of the personal computer industry, and its growth has been stopped cold: first by a struggling economy and then the rise of the tablet computers like Apple's (AAPL) iPad.

If Dell went private, it would be looking for ways to cut costs and stop the decline in sales and profits, particularly in its consumer division.

On Monday, Gartner, the market research company, said that Dell sold 37.6 million PCs globally in 2012, off 12.3% from 2011. In the fourth quarter, worldwide PC sales were off 4.9% as consumers bought tablets rather than notebook PCs.

Revenue may fall nearly 9% in fiscal 2013 to $56.7 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Dell reports fourth-quarter results on Feb. 19. Prospects are for a further -- if smaller -- decline in fiscal 2014. Net income in the fiscal-third quarter, which ended on Nov. 2, was down 47% from a year ago.

If you're a Dell shareholder, you have to somewhat happy that the shares are up more than 16% in just two trading days. For Michael Dell, however, the $422 million gain his shares have seen in the last two days have to be bittersweet. His 244.93 million shares are worth a bit more than $3 billion.

But the fact is, the shares fell 31% in 2012. Worse, they're down 79% since peaking at nearly $60 in March 2000. There is a little good news here. The shares are up nearly 42% since hitting their 52-week intraday low at $8.69 on Nov. 16.

Dell has been one of the legends of American business. Michael Dell, 47, founded the company in 1984, when he started to build computers from his dorm room at the University of Texas. It became famed for its direct-to-consumer marketing. A customer could call in and specify the features of a computer. Dell would make it and ship it out, often within a few weeks.

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