Despite President Trump’s claims about a miraculous economy, planned layoffs reached their highest level for January since the Great Recession.
New data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas released on Thursday revealed that last month saw more job-cut announcements than in any January since 2009.
The outplacement firm said that the 108,435 announcements made were up 205 percent compared to December 2025. That’s also 118 percent higher than January 2025.
Breaking down the 17-year high, the firm’s workplace expert Andy Challenger said, “Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January.” He added, “It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026.”
Key industries led the month’s layoffs, with the transport sector accounting for 31,243 planned cuts, largely due to UPS’s announcement to remove 30,000 people from its payroll.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the majority of the 22,291 planned job cuts in the technology industry were credited to Amazon, which plans to axe 16,000 roles.
According to CNBC, hiring figures were also bleak, with just 5,306 new hires announced in January.
Despite conversations in the tech space being dominated by artificial intelligence, Challenger said this instance may not be its fault.
He said that Amazon “CEO Andy Jassy, like many CEOs recently, has said AI will cost jobs in the coming years, but this cut appears to be due more to overhiring and reducing layers than to the new technology.”
Healthcare was the third biggest loser, with 17,107 job cuts announced. It is the largest monthly cut in the industry since April 2020.
“Healthcare providers and hospital systems are grappling with inflation and high labor costs,” Challenger said. “Lower reimbursements from Medicaid and Medicare are also hitting hospital systems. These pressures are leading to job cuts, as well as other cutting measures, such as some pay and benefits. It’s very difficult for leaders of these companies to tighten budgets while not sacrificing patient care.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “President Trump’s economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, tariffs, and energy abundance has a proven track record of success—these same policies created a historic economy in his first term. As trillions of investments continue pouring in to make and hire in America, and as GDP growth continues to accelerate, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”
The administration’s financial confidence is nothing new. Trump repeatedly bragged about a booming economy under his stewardship, claiming in Michigan in January that it had been the “greatest first year in history.”
Whether or not people are buying the bluster, however, is a murkier matter. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump praised his own policies, especially tariffs, claiming they had “created an American economic miracle, and we are quickly building the greatest economy in the history of the world, with other countries doing just fine!”
But GOP strategist Karl Rove attacked the president on Fox News Sunday, accusing him of “making the same mistake” as Joe Biden by claiming people were doing better financially than they really felt they were, The Hill reports.
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