US Posts Most October Layoffs in More Than 20 Years

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Transcript

00:00Normally out at 7.30, Challenger released these early because why not start everybody's day off in a bad mood here?

00:06153,074 job cuts announced for October, the highest since 2003 for the month,

00:13and it's a 183% increase from September, 175% over the last year.

00:19For 2025, we're up 65% in terms of job cuts over 2024.

00:24It's the most year-to-date cut since 2020, which, of course, screws up all the graphs.

00:31But the monthly cuts are extremely high, and AI is one of the main reasons, particularly this year.

00:38That and Doge, according to the Challenger Gray and Christmas people.

00:43But there are some caveats, Matt, that we have to mention, and it's why Challenger doesn't get a lot of use by economists.

00:50That's because they're compiled from companies' announced plans.

00:54They don't always follow through on all that, and some of it comes from attrition as opposed to actually cutting the jobs.

01:01It can also take many months before any of these job cuts are realized.

01:05Amazon, with its big announcement, gave people 90 days' notice, so it's going to be a while there.

01:10These are also worldwide, not just in the U.S.

01:13It's not just Americans who are losing their jobs or not getting new ones,

01:16but it is an unfortunate number that will catch people's attention at the Fed.

01:22Also, bad news, they're saying that seasonal hiring announced plans are the lowest since they began tracking them in 2012.