Deliberate layoffs have now reached their highest price since 2009’s Nice Recession.
The information comes from outplacement agency Challenger, Grey & Christmas’s new layoffs report, which revealed that U.S.-based employers introduced 108,435 job cuts in January, marking the best price to start out a yr since 2009. Additionally notable, in the identical month, simply 5,306 deliberate hires had been introduced—the bottom whole on file for January.
Based on the info, meaning layoffs are up a staggering 118% from the identical interval a yr in the past, and 205% from December 2025.
“Typically, we see a excessive variety of job cuts within the first quarter, however this can be a excessive whole for January,” Andy Challenger, office knowledgeable and chief income officer for the agency, mentioned within the report. “It means most of those plans had been set on the finish of 2025, signaling employers are lower than optimistic concerning the outlook for 2026.”
The toughest-hit sectors for layoffs are transportation, know-how, and healthcare. Based on a Reuters report, 31,243 deliberate cuts got here from United Parcel Service (UPS). UPS intends to shut 24 amenities in 2026, as a part of a serious restructuring effort.
On the tech aspect, there have been 22,291 job cuts—most of which got here from Amazon, as the corporate introduced plans to put off 16,000 company workers.
“A few of you would possibly ask if that is the start of a brand new rhythm—where we announce broad reductions every few months,” wrote Beth Galetti, senior vice chairman of individuals expertise and know-how at Amazon, in an announcement last week. “That’s not our plan. However simply as we all the time have, each crew will proceed to guage the possession, pace, and capability to invent for patrons, and make changes as applicable.”
In the meantime, the healthcare sector has been struggling because of federal funding cuts, with 17,107 job reductions introduced in January, making it the biggest quantity since April 2020.
“Healthcare suppliers and hospital techniques are grappling with inflation and excessive labor prices,” Challenger mentioned. “Decrease reimbursements from Medicaid and Medicare are additionally hitting hospital techniques. These pressures are resulting in job cuts, in addition to different slicing measures, reminiscent of some pay and advantages. It’s very troublesome for leaders of those firms to tighten budgets whereas not sacrificing affected person care.”
Moreover, the Labor Division reported that job openings are right down to the bottom price since September 2020, as vacancies fell to six.5 million in December.
After all, many have been fast guilty artificial intelligence for a surging variety of layoffs. However some specialists say that it has extra to do with present financial circumstances, and AI is being used as a mere scapegoat.
In a submit on BlueSky, CNBC journalist Carl Quintanilla shared a quote attributed to the agency Renaissance Macro Analysis, referencing the Challenger report and explaining the true causes behind the downslide: “Whereas there may be fairly a little bit of consideration on AI driving layoffs, a lot of the causes cited on this information set are about ‘closing,’ ‘financial circumstances,’ ‘restructuring,’ and ‘lack of contract.’ AI is a relatively small issue behind the January bounce in layoff information.”
That aligns with data from entities just like the Brookings Establishment and Yale College, which discovered that sectors (together with ones particularly vulnerable to AI) haven’t seen drastic changes within the quantity of accessible jobs since ChatGPT debuted in 2022.
Nonetheless, different specialists proceed to imagine that AI’s toll on the job market will likely be crushing.
“We’re at the start of a multi-decade progress improvement that can have a serious affect on the labor market,” Gad Levanon, chief economist on the Burning Glass Institute, a workforce analysis agency, informed CNBC final yr.
“There’s most likely far more within the tank,” he mentioned.
