The Challenger report for August shows a 217.1 percent jump in announced layoff intentions to 75,151 after 23,697 in July, and is up 266.9 percent from 20,485 in August 2022. The large increase is mainly due to layoffs of 32,123 in warehousing (42.7 percent of the total) that was deeply affected by the bankruptcy of Yellow Corp. The next largest number of layoffs is in healthcare and health products at 7,688 (10.2 percent of the total).

Among reasons cited for layoff intentions the largest is 30,607 in bankruptcy (40.7 percent of the total). The second largest is closing with 15,883 layoffs (21.1 percent of the total).

For 2023 to date, there are 557,057 layoff announcements tracked by Challenger, up 210 percent from 179,506 in the January-August 2022 period. For the year-to-date, layoffs in technology continue to lead by a wide margin at 149,452 in 2023 compared to 14,408 in the first eight months of 2022. Technology layoffs account for 73.2 percent of the 2023 year-to-date total. The next highest is retail with year-to-date layoffs of 55,755 versus 8,940 in the same period last year. Retail accounts for 10.0 percent of the year-to-date total for 2023. Most layoffs are occurring in a few sectors and are consistent with a few seismic events that are not spreading to the economy more broadly.

In August, hiring intentions remained soft at 7,744 in all. The largest number of intentions are in financial at 1,915 (24.7 percent of the total), followed by 1,345 in energy (17.4 percent), and automotive (14.9 percent). Businesses are cautious about future increases to payrolls. They may not be laying off in large numbers, but neither are they adding jobs more than necessary in an uncertain economic environment.

This monthly report counts and categorizes announcements of corporate layoffs based on mass layoff data from state departments of labor. The job-cut report must be analyzed with caution. It doesn't distinguish between layoffs scheduled for the short-term or the long term, or whether job cuts are handled through attrition or actual layoffs. Also, the job-cut report does not include jobs eliminated in small batches over a longer time period. Unlike most economic data, this series is not adjusted for seasonal variation.

The job-cut report is basically a rehash of the weekly jobless claims report but provides additional insight into where layoffs are occurring. There is industry and geographic (states) detail that is not available with weekly jobless claims.