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Posted on 11/07/2025 10:10:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Technology firms led private-sector job cuts as employers looked to cut costs and address AI.
Last month was the worst October for layoff announcements since 2003 as companies slashed roles to save money, pared back pandemic-era hires, and planned ahead for artificial intelligence, according to the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Employers announced 153,074 cuts last month, compared to 55,597 cuts in October 2024. Last month’s figure was “the highest total for October in over 20 years, and the highest total for a single month in the fourth quarter since 2008,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a report Thursday.
Altogether, US firms announced the end of 1,099,500 positions through the first 10 months of this year, up 44% from the 761,358 cuts seen for the entirety of 2024. Technology businesses led private-sector layoffs.
“October’s pace of job cutting was much higher than average for the month,” Challenger said in a statement.
“Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes,” he continued. “Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market.”
Recent notable layoff announcements have come from Amazon (AMZN), Target (TGT), and UPS (UPS). Year-to-date cuts are at their highest since 2020, Challenger said, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the labor market.
The Challenger report comes amid a data drought from the Labor Department due to the government shutdown — now the longest in US history. The last official jobs report reflects labor conditions from August, while data from September has yet to be published. October’s jobs report, due out tomorrow, is unlikely to be published.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
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The article goes on to say:
Through August, the story was that the labor market was essentially in stasis: an environment of low hiring and low firing, with unemployment nudging up to 4.3% as the unemployed struggled to find available positions and the employed clung to their roles.
It’s unlikely the situation has changed dramatically since then — data from the payroll processor ADP published Wednesday actually showed modest job growth among private employers for October, with hiring gains mixed by sector.
Sounds like we need less immigrant (especially h1b visa scammers) and increased deportations
Worthless AI is KILLING JOBS
No mention of how many were H1Bs ?
Stop all work visas now!
A lot of the government workers who took the Trump termination package were officially terminated in October Just sayin’
Curious, if ‘AI’ is worthless, are the jobs it is ‘killing’ worthless??
What do you do with all of the “laid off” white collar people? Have them code?
We need an “Industrial Renaissance” in this country on the same level as what we did during WW2. More oil and gas production, more new refineries and power plants, strengthening the electrical grid. Domestic production of all metals including rare metals, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. And we need to tell the enviros to stick it.
Companies haven’t figured out the useless part yet they think they’re saving money ,LOL
No one will have the money to buy the product because there will be no jobs. Universal income is in the future. You will own nothing and be happy.
Funny how NO ONE CARED when millions of factory jobs were offshored and entire towns were devastated. The silence was deafening.
Define layoffs. When they are foreigners does it count?
The Federal Reserve officially sets its benchmark for an optimum percentage of full employment at an unemployment rate of 5. 0 to 5. 2%.
Full employment is defined as the optimal range of unemployment where there a balance between the number of Americans gainfully employed and those seeking new job positions to avoid the negative economic consequences of labor shortages.
Economists typically use 4-6% unemployment as an optimum number in our economy.
If unemployment numbers go above an unemployment rate of 5. 0 to 5. 2%. then too many people are out of work but if unemployment numbers go below an unemployment rate of 5. 0 to 5. 2%. then too many people are working and there are the potential for serious labor shortages
At unemployment levels below 5.0% people who are looking for jobs are in high demand and can find a new and often better job quickly and with little difficulty.
As of now, at an official 4.35 % unemployment we are well below the 5.0 % unemployment levels that the Federal Reserves considers the optimum for a healthy, dynamic economy that balances job mobility, full employment and an adequate pool of skilled workers so that employers can readily hire the kind of labor force they need without shortages.
In fact, we are very close to the danger zone of too low of an unemployment rate for optimum economic growth.
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are only wage shortages.
Speaking as someone knee-deep?
No, the jobs being replaced are not “worthless” - they’re simply getting priced out. I still need code. I still need QA. I still need analytics.
For example, I still need QA done on a new product, new feature, etc. And a lot of QA is simply click, watch, report results. QA is traditionally an entry-level role - and the people who traditionally excelled and advanced were the ones who didn’t just punch a clock, record results, but learned to go further and do things like suggest a remedy or refine the report so corrections were properly/more rapidly routed.
The role has value. But now? I can whip up an agentic AI solution that can do the clicks and more? Replace an analyst doing the routing.
Too many people hear “AI” and they lean on RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation - basically, turning it look on the wild universe) and think it’s all about asking silly gotcha questions.
The reality is: Within my limited stack, with lighter-RAG touches? I can - and we are - using agentic AI in closed boxes to replace a lot of entry-level work.
I won’t argue that’s scary for the younger generation - and it should be! - but the reality is that a token-cost spend is maybe 10% of an FTE. I still need that work done - but nobody is going to spend 10X the cost to do it.
My advice would be that it’s no different than any other technical advancement - and that’s been a fact of life forever. Automation, computers, networks, you name it. Make yourself valuable. Complain to the wind, or learn to adapt and figure out the value proposition.
If Ai can make it cheaper to run a business by needing less employees I hope this leads to smaller businesses being able to compete. We will see how it goes
Bingo
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