Layoff announcements this year have hit their highest level since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the U.S. economy, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Thursday.
It’s only the sixth time since 1993 that announced job cuts through the month of November have surpassed 1.1 million. The last time was in 2020, when planned cuts totaled 2.3 million by this point in the year.
U.S.-based employers announced 71,321 job cuts in November, Challenger reports. This is fewer than the overall number of layoffs announced in October, but more than in the same month a year ago.
It’s the highest total for the month of November since 2022. Hiring often fluctuates with the season, so economists and analysts typically pay close attention to data from the same month in previous years, and not just month-to-month changes.
Announced job cuts during November “have risen above 70,000 only twice since 2008: in 2022 and 2008,” Challenger’s chief revenue officer, Andy Challenger, said in a statement.
Some of the industries that Challenger said were hit hardest by layoffs last month included technology, food companies and telecommunications firms.
Verizon, one of the nation’s largest telecom firms, announced plans to cut 13,000 jobs in November.
Normally the Challenger report carries relatively little weight among market participants and economists because it only tracks publicly announced job cuts, most of which haven’t happened yet. While the announcements are made by U.S.-based firms, Challenger includes cuts to jobs overseas in its tally for multinational firms.
This report, however, comes in the midst of a historic data void created by the government shutdown, which furloughed employees at many of the federal government’s statistical agencies that collect and publish economic data.
The Challenger report is one of the relatively few data points available right now to markets, lawmakers and the Fed.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ next employment report will not be released until Dec. 16.
The Challenger data also comes one day after ADP reported that private employer payrolls contracted by a net 32,000 jobs in November. Small businesses were hit especially hard, shedding 120,000 jobs, ADP said.
Another piece of data released Thursday, weekly initial jobless claims, came in slightly better than expected shortly after the Challenger report.
On Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC that the numbers in ADP’s grim report were not caused by the administration’s sweeping tariff agenda, but by the recent government shutdown and recent deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Lutnick said the jobs data would “rebalance” in the future, and that “next year, the numbers are going to be fantastic.”
Yet the broader trends in the economy have not gone unnoticed by the Trump administration, which has taken steps in recent weeks to roll back some tariffs on food items.
Inflation has risen every month since April, when Trump rolled out his global reciprocal tariffs.
