Layoffs Surge 315%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 1, 9:45AM EDT

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Layoffs Surge 315% — © Tigeroner / Getty Images

Anyone who thinks that tech layoffs will not lead job attrition in the United States this year is wrong. According to a new report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, of 417,500 layoffs announced through the first five months of the year, 136,831 have been in the tech sector. (Your boss does not want you to know about these labor laws.)
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The job market, in general, has been poor so far in 2023, and according to Challenger, Gray, May was no exception. Layoffs jumped 287% from May of last year to 80,089, based on job cut plans by large companies. For the year, the number is up 315% to 417,500. According to the report, “With the exception of 2020, it is the highest total in the first five months of the year since 2009, when 822,282 cuts were tracked through May.” And 2009 was at the depths of the Great Recession.
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Challenger, Gray blamed the cuts on a jump in consumer anxiety and an expectation by companies that there will be a recession. “Consumer confidence is down to a six-month low and job openings are flattening. Companies appear to be putting the brakes on hiring in anticipation of a slowdown,” said Andrew Challenger, labor expert and senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
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Some sectors have been sparred significant layoffs. Education jobs cuts were 4,667 in the first five months of last year. They have been 3,394 so far in 2023. Job cuts in the industrial goods sector are also down from 2,766 to 1,849.
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These are the jobs figures for the first five months of 2022 and 2023 by industry:

Industry	2022 YTD	2023 YTD
Aerospace/Defense	924	4,065
Apparel	461	1,096
Automotive	5,380	18,017
Chemical	0	675
Construction	1,150	2,585
Consumer Products	4,183	21,544
Education	4,667	3,394
Electronics	355	990
Energy	730	1,333
Entertainment/Leisure	7,253	10,769
Financial	8,788	36,937
Fintech	2,059	9,909
Food	5,101	7,214
Government	4,933	600
Health Care/Products	18,301	33,085
Industrial Goods	2,766	1,849
Insurance	870	2,844
Legal	0	690
Media	1,278	17,436
Mining	161	614
Nonprofit	1,293	2,103
Pharmaceutical	1,132	4,696
Real Estate	2,475	4,802
Retail	4,335	45,168
Services	9,297	26,879
Technology	4,503	136,831
Telecommunications	240	5,743
Transportation	1,777	5,959
Utility	858	509
Warehousing	5,424	9,164

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.