The Challenger job cut intentions report for October jumps 183.1 percent to 153,074 after 54,064 in September and is up 175.1 percent from 55,597 in October 2024. Every industry except for legal announced at least some layoffs in October. The year-to-date total for 2025 is 1,099,500 compared to 664,839 in the same period last year. This is the highest since 2,162,904 in the first 10 months of 2020 and 1,032,033 in the comparable period of 2009.

Announced job cut intentions can include eliminating open positions, withdrawing earlier plans for hiring, and/or cutting current workforces. Job cuts may take place immediately, at some point in the future, or never at all if circumstances change. At the moment, businesses are adapting to an evolving situation with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in operations, high levels of economic uncertainty, and/or rising costs as the market determines who in the supply chain will pay the new tariffs.

In October, the largest share of job cut plans are in warehousing (47,878, or 31.3 percent of the total) and technology (33,281, or 21.7 percent). Together, the two account for over half of all planned cuts.

Among reasons cited for planned job cuts in October, the two largest shares are in cost-cutting (50,437, or 32.9 percent of the total) and artificial intelligence (31,309, or 20.3 percent). Together, these account for over half of all reasons given.

There are 283,138 announced hiring plans in October, up 141.4 percent from 117,313 in September and 6.1 percent from 266,743 in October. However, most of that is from big hiring intentions in technology (250,466, or 88.5 percent of the total). Excluding that, the total is a much more modest 32,672 and nearly half of that is in retail (16,005).

September and October are the months in which retailers and transportation companies hire workers for the winter holiday season. In 2025, for September and October, only 112,455 hiring intentions have been announced for retailers compared to 534,450 in 2024 and 447,713 in 2023. This September/October total is the lowest since 52,502 in 2009. Delivery services typically add workers for the holiday crush, but this year have only announced a meager 48 hiring intentions in the two-month period, the lowest since online shopping has become a force in holiday retail spending.

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.