Job cuts at U.S. companies in February reached their highest level since 2009, according to the monthly layoffs report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“Businesses are aggressively slashing costs and embracing technological innovations, actions that are significantly reshaping staffing needs,” Andrew Challenger, a labor and workplace expert at Challenger, said in the report.
Employers primarily cited “restructuring” as the cause of layoffs. Fewer companies blamed store or plant closers and economic conditions. Examples of this can be seen in high profile tech layoffs at companies such as Google. The tech giant announced layoffs in January as part of a large-scale reshuffling, saying the company is shifting to “[invest] in our company’s biggest priorities.” A month earlier, the company launched its AI bot Gemini. Other Big Tech rivals such as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Meta have all announced cuts this year just as they look to ramp up their AI efforts.
Employers in the tech industry, unsurprisingly, announced more layoffs than any others — but job cuts in tech are actually much lower than they were last year. In February 2023, nearly one third of all job cuts came from tech companies. But this year, more industries have seen cuts surge. Manufacturing and energy companies, for example, saw layoffs soar more than 1,000% so far this year from the same period in 2023.
But tech is still the biggest victim of the latest layoff wave. Comparing Challenger’s report on U.S. employers to a global tracker, Layoffs.fyi, Quartz found that U.S. employers account for more than half of tech job cuts worldwide recorded in 2024. The most recent eliminations were announced at Rivian, Sony, and Bumble, among others.
Another big difference between February 2024 and 2023 is that healthcare is bouncing back. The healthcare industry was not even listed on Challenger’s list of sectors with big cuts in 2024; on the other hand, healthcare employers cut nearly 10,000 jobs during the same month last year in an attempt to cut costs amid inflation. Now, healthcare employers are in major recruitment mode for patient-facing roles, with job postings for physicians and surgeons up 102% from before the pandemic.
Even though February layoffs are their highest since the Great Recession, the job market is still hot, with 353,000 jobs added in January and unemployment remaining at historic lows.