Many of America's largest employers are shedding jobs again, but reasons appear more complicated than a simple correction to pandemic-era hiring. A review of government data by GlobeSt.com suggests that while some companies are "right-sizing" after a hiring boom, others are reacting to deeper structural shifts—particularly in technology and logistics—even as profits remain historically high.
According to The Wall Street Journal, analysts often trace the layoffs back to "overly heavy post-pandemic hiring." But corporate moves tell a broader story.
Last week, Amazon said it would cut 16,000 corporate roles after eliminating 14,000 positions last fall. UPS, which trimmed 48,000 jobs in 2025, plans to shed another 30,000 this year. Pinterest, meanwhile, expects to reduce its workforce by up to 15%.
"A lot of these companies found that they are too big," Guy Berger, senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, told the Journal.
Layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that 2025 ended with the highest fourth-quarter layoffs since 2008, alongside the weakest full-year hiring since 2010. December's announced job cuts, however, dropped sharply to 35,553 from 71,321 in November, marking the lowest level of planned reductions for the year.
"While December is typically slow, this, coupled with higher hiring plans, is a positive sign after a year of high job-cutting plans," said Andy Challenger, the firm's chief revenue officer.
Even so, employers announced 1.2 million job cuts in 2025, up from about 761,000 in 2024. The public sector led the wave, with 308,167 government job cuts—up dramatically from 38,375 in the prior year.
Technology ranked as the top private-sector contributor, with 154,445 layoffs, a 15% increase from 2024.
"Technology has been pivoting to both developing and implementing artificial intelligence much more quickly than any other industry," Challenger explained. "This coupled with over-hiring over the last decade created a wave of job loss."
Other sectors also contracted sharply. Warehousing and logistics lost 95,317 jobs in 2025. Retailers announced 92,989 cuts—up 123% from the year before—while the services sector eliminated 74,796 positions, up 68%. Challenger cited store and department closures as the leading reason for layoffs, followed by market conditions, restructuring, artificial intelligence, tariffs and actions by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Federal data indicates that total private employment, tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fell sharply in 2020 before rebounding to pre-pandemic levels by February 2022. Hiring momentum continued beyond that point.
Yet despite ongoing employment growth, corporate profits before tax—measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis—tell a different story. After peaking at a record $4.389 trillion at the end of 2024, profits dropped to just over $4 trillion in early 2025 before recovering slightly to $4.28 trillion in the third quarter. Results for the year's final quarter are not yet available.
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