US Job Cuts Rise Over 200%

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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US Job Cuts Rise Over 200%

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According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoffs at U.S. companies soared 217% in August to 75,151, compared to July. The increase was 267% from August of 2022. Year to date, the increase is 210% to 557,057. (These industries are laying off the most workers.)
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“Job openings are falling, and American workers are more reluctant to leave their positions right now. The job market is resetting after the pandemic and post-pandemic hiring frenzy,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Government jobs data support this point of view.
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While the firm’s numbers are not as widely accepted as Bureau of Labor Statistics data and numbers from ADP, they are directionally useful and signal changes in employment at large companies.

The industry that has absorbed the most damage is tech. Job cuts in this arena came in at 149,452 out of the 557,057 total. Most of these happened earlier this year as companies, including Meta and Amazon, cut tens of thousands of workers. They added many of these jobs in the two prior years. However, their revenue growth has slowed compared to that period.
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Among other large cuts, the media industry was near the top. Job cuts there totaled 19,117. However, overall it is a much smaller industry when taking employment into account.
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Retail also suffered with job cuts of 55,755. While several companies, including Walmart, have had good years, others, such as Target, have done poorly.

There may be no recession on the horizon, but an economic slowdown means these numbers could get worse.

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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.

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