It’s a tough time to be looking for a job. Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill.
That's caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, sizable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors.
Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trump's barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence.
Federal employees have encountered additional doses of uncertainty, impacting worker sentiment around the job market overall. Shortly after Trump returned to office at the start of the year, federal jobs were cut by the thousands. And the record 43-day government shutdown also left many to work without paychecks.
The impasse put key economic data on hold, too. In a delayed report released Thursday, the Labor Department said U.S. employers added a surprising 119,000 jobs in September.
But unemployment rose to 4.4 percent — and other troubling details emerged, including revisions showing the economy actually lost 4,000 jobs in August. There’s also growing gender and racial disparities. The National Women’s Law Center notes women only accounted for 21,000 of September’s added jobs — and that Black women over the age of 20, in particular, saw unemployment climb to 7.5 percent for the month.
The shutdown has left holes in more recent hiring numbers. The government says it won’t release a full jobs report for October.
Here are some of the largest job cuts announced recently:
In November, Verizon began laying off more than 13,000 employees. In a staff memo announcing the cuts, CEO Dan Schulman said that the telecommunications giant needed to simplify operations and “reorient” the entire company.
General Motors moved to lay off about 1,700 workers across manufacturing sites in Michigan and Ohio in late October, as the auto giant adjusts to slowing demand for electric vehicles.
Amazon said last month that it will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, close to 4% of its workforce, as the online retail giant ramps up spending on AI while trimming costs elsewhere.
In mid-October, Nestlé said it would be cutting 16,000 jobs globally — as part of wider cost cutting aimed at reviving its financial performance amid headwinds like rising commodity costs and U.S. imposed tariffs.
In September, Lufthansa Group said it would shed 4,000 jobs by 2030 — pointing to the adoption of artificial intelligence, digitalization and consolidating work among member airlines.
Intel has moved to shed thousands of jobs — with the struggling chipmaker working to revive its business.
In May, Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers across its workforce. And just months later, the tech giant said it would be cutting 9,000 positions — marking its biggest round of layoffs seen in more than two years. The company has cited “organizational changes,” but the labor reductions also arrive as the company spends heavily on AI.
