In addition to its ongoing effort to reduce the number of contractors, temporary workers, and interns on its payroll, Google on Wednesday said that it is eliminating about 100 full-time positions in its recruiting group.

In a blog post, Laszlo Bock, VP of people operations, said that Google is still hiring ... but at a reduced rate. As a consequence, it needs fewer people to hire people.

"Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google," said Bock. "However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions."

Bock expressed sympathy for the people losing their jobs and said he hoped many of them would be able to find new roles at Google.

Google began looking at ways to reduce its contract and temporary worker head count last spring. In an October article in the San Jose Mercury News, Google co-founder Sergey Brin estimated that his company had a temporary workforce of about 10,000.

A recent Associated Press report revealed that a Google SEC filing in December indicates that the company has about 24,000 employees and 4,300 contractors, temporary workers, and interns.

A Google spokesperson subsequently said that the workers mentioned in the SEC document represent a subset of the 10,000 cited by Brin and that one shouldn't conclude that the difference between the two figures -- 5,700 -- represents the number of temp workers let go.

In a related blog post, Alan Eustace, senior VP of engineering and research at Google, said that some 70 engineers in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, had been asked to move to new offices. The goal is to reduce overhead he said. A Google spokesperson confirmed the closures.

"We do recognize the upheaval and heartache that these changes may have on Google families, and that we may not be able to keep 100% of these exceptional employees," he said.

Google is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter financial results next week.