The Challenger report on announced layoff intentions is down 4.0 percent to 72,821 in September after 75,891 in August and up 53.4 percent from 47,457 in September 2023. For the year-to-date 2024, the total number of layoffs is 609,242, slightly above 604,514 in the first nine months of 2023. At least some of these planned layoffs may be in eliminating open slots. However, businesses may also be starting the normal process of trimming workforces before the end of the year at little earlier than usual against the backdrop of economic and geopolitical uncertainties.

Overall, layoff intentions are spread out across industries. In September, the largest share of layoff intentions are in technology (11,430, or 15.4 percent), healthcare (10,458, or 14.4 percent), and entertainment (9,368). Reasons cited for layoffs were most prevalent in cost-cutting (15,750, or 21.6 percent of the total) and closing (14,054, or 19.3 percent). Also notable is that artificial intelligence is cited frequently (5,616, or 7.7 percent).

Hiring intentions surged to 403,893 in September from 6,101 in August. This is effectively entirely due to plant to hire in advance of the winter shopping season. Retailers plan to hire 276,450 workers and transportation companies 125,510. This accounts for 99.5 percent of all hiring plans. The bulk of plans to hire seasonal workers to meet the upcoming shopping season are normally announced in September. This year's plans are well below last year's when 438,420 workers were announced in September and 100,200 transportation workers.

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.