Right Now Is The Job Market “No Hire, More Fire”?

The U.S. labor market has been characterized as a ‘no hire, no fire’ landscape for much of the past year. But ‘no hire, more fire’ increasingly looks more accurate, providing further ammunition for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Retail giant Amazon on Tuesday announced 14,000 layoffs, with more to come next year, while delivery service UPS revealed that it has cut a whopping 48,000 employees over the past year. The reasons cited include protecting margins, employing more artificial intelligence, and reversing pandemic-era over-hiring. These aren’t the only eye-opening announcements recently: around 25,000 workers are being let go at Intel, 15,000 at Microsoft, and 11,000 at Accenture. The Trump administration is also firing swathes of government workers. In total, U.S. employers announced almost 950,000 job cuts in the January-September period, according to global placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, with the top affected sectors being government, tech and retail. While most of that was earlier in the year, these figures suggest the labor market is truly cracking, lending credence to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s view that downside risks to employment outweigh upside risks to inflation.