Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan.
Andrew Steinerman - JPMorgan
I wanted to focus on the losses in Protiviti, Keith. If I take out the severance of $2 million in the quarter, that makes it $11 million loss. I think that is the same loss level in the first quarter when you took out $7 million; it was about $11 million.
I know you're going to say, revenues are lower so we were able to maintain the loss, but could you walk us through the pieces of what would it take for us to get to break even, talking about the $11 million benefit you just discussed? Is that $11 million benefit cumulative with the benefit from the first quarter severance or is that separate from what we discussed in the last conference call?
Keith Waddell
Andrew, the million is new and incremental to everything just reported. Clearly, the revenues declined by another $10 million or $11 million in the second quarter versus the first.
We had reduced our cost structure to the revenue levels of the first quarter and therefore the lower revenue amount essentially fell all the way to the bottom line. We reduced our cost structure yet again, and seasonally the third quarter is typically a better quarter for Protiviti than others. In these economic environments, seasonality hasn't trumped cyclicality. But that said, there is a better business backdrop going into the third quarter versus the second.
I would say that the losses in the second quarter were disproportionately outside the United States. We certainly made progress relative to what we had done in the first quarter, and we expect to make significant further progress in the third quarter as well, such that we believe, again, at the current revenue levels, we've got our cost structure down, such that we would break even at around the current revenue levels.
If revenue levels continue to decline as we said in the past, we will continue to reduce our cost structure. That said, just like we were encouraged that there has been some stabilization in our staffing revenues over the past several weeks, we've also been encouraged in Protiviti particularly in the United States, about the near term trends during the quarter as well as the first half of July.
It's clearly been a tough downturn for Protiviti. It's probably been relatively a bigger shock to their system than is the case in staffing, which as Max mentioned, this downturn is only about 10% more impactful than the prior downturn versus at Protiviti versus at the big four accounting firms. I think they'll tell you that this is dramatically worse than anything they've ever seen.
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