Last month was the worst January for job cut announcements since 2009
Last month was the worst January for job cut announcements since 2009
Publish Date: 2026-02-05 07:30:00
Source Domain: www.cnn.com
Mass layoffs outlined last month by the likes of Amazon and UPS made for the worst January for job cut announcements since the Great Recession, new data showed Thursday.
US-based employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, a threefold increase from layoff announcements in December and more than double what was tallied in January a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas’ latest monthly report.
It’s the highest number of layoff announcements made in January since 2009, Challenger said.
About 40% of January’s layoff announcements can be tied to two firms: Amazon and UPS, which outlined plans for 16,000 and 30,000 job cuts, respectively. UPS’s plans to cut up to 30,000 jobs were tied to its ongoing wind-down of its delivery arrangement with Amazon, executives for the shipping giant said last week during an earnings call.
The January layoff announcements tracked by Challenger were limited to five industries – transportation, technology, health care and health products, chemical and financial, according to the report.
“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at the outplacement and executive coaching firm, said in a statement. “It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less than optimistic about the outlook for 2026.”
The biggest reasons cited for the month’s planned cutbacks were contract loss (30,784 – the bulk of which were attributed to UPS), followed by market and economic conditions (28,392), restructuring (20,044) or closures (12,738), according to the report. Artificial intelligence was cited for 7,624 cuts in January and tariffs were cited for 294 cuts last…
