With employers announcing close to 222,000 job cuts so far this year, the 2025 layoff rate is at its highest year-to-date total since 2009 when over 428,000 cuts were planned over the same period of time.
February saw the largest amount of monthly job cuts in over four years, more than 172,000 job cuts according to United States-based employers, the highest total since July of 2020. The cuts are also the highest for the month of February since 2009 when more than 186,000 occurred, a report by Challenger, Gray and Christmas released Thursday said.
February’s job cuts are a 245% increase from the nearly 50,000 in January, and a 103% increase from the close to 85,000 that happened in February 2024. The overall cuts occurring so far in 2025 are up by 33% compared to the same period in 2024, when nearly 167 thousand cuts were announced.
“Private companies announced plans to shed thousands of jobs last month, particularly in Retail and Technology,” said Senior Vice President and workplace expert for the Challenger, Gray and Christmas outplacement services firm Andrew Challenger in a press release, adding that “With the impact of the Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] actions, as well as canceled government contracts, fear of trade wars, and bankruptcies, job cuts soared in February.”
However, during the week ending March 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims dropped to 221 thousand, down 21,000 from the prior week’s unrevised level of 242,000. But the four-week moving average was more than 224,000, increasing from the previous week’s unrevised average by 250 claims.
More than 1,600 former Federal civilian employees filed for Unemployment Insurance benefits during the week that ended on Feb. 22, an increase of more than a thousand claims made the prior week. New Jersey and Rhode Island saw the highest insured unemployment rate, 2.9, during the week ending Feb. 15, while Massachusetts and Rhode Island saw largest increases in initial claims, 3.808, for the week ending Feb. 22.
The private payroll company ADP also released grim news, stating that February’s job creation rate was the smallest since July. ADP said that only 77,000 private sector jobs were created in February.
“Policy uncertainty and a slowdown in consumer spending might have led to layoffs or a slowdown in hiring last month,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson in a press release, “Our data, combined with other recent indicators, suggests a hiring hesitancy among employers as they assess the economic climate ahead.”
UPI