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Companies based in the U.S. announced in July that they plan to eliminate a record number of jobs, more than double the amount announced in the same month last year, according to a new report.
The report, from recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tracks U.S.-based employers’ announcements about layoffs, which do not indicate the number of job losses that have occurred or when the positions will be eliminated. The estimates can change based on a variety of factors, including, in the case of government layoffs, litigation, explained Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“These are job cut announcements versus actual people losing a job,” Ajilore told Truthout.
Ajilore says the Challenger’s report demonstrates companies’ feelings of “uncertainty about the labor market,” which he attributes to Trump’s immigration policies, tariffs, and cuts to the federal workforce.
Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that the announced layoffs, if they ultimately occur, may take place over the course of a year or longer, which is why the Challenger report does not “directly correlate with our other data about the economy.”
“You always want to look at it in conjunction with other data that we’re getting about the economy,” Baker said. “In this case, it fits very well.”
So far this year, employers have announced plans to cut more than 800,000 jobs, the highest number since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has eliminated thousands of federal jobs, was the number one reason cited by employers for their planned job cuts. Experts estimate that DOGE’s actions may end up costing the United States billions of dollars.
“‘DOGE Impact’ remains the leading reason for job cut announcements in 2025,” the report says. “An additional 13,056 cuts have been attributed to DOGE Downstream Impact, such as the loss of funding to private non-profits and affiliated organizations.”
Employers’ second-most cited reason was “Market and Economic Conditions,” which the report says “reflects a continued response to economic uncertainty, inflation, and shifting demand across multiple sectors.”
The industries that announced the most planned layoffs were government, technology, retail, nonprofits and automotive. Retailers, who will be hit particularly hard by Trump’s tariffs, said that they plan to eliminate more than 80,000 jobs, an increase of nearly 250 percent from the same period last year.
Despite Trump’s claims that the U.S. economy is thriving, there’s cause for concern. The latest data from the consumer price index (CPI) shows that prices were 2.7 percent higher in July than the same time a year ago. Earlier this month, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency published numbers that showed fewer jobs were added in May, June and July than initially projected.
“We’re definitely looking at a weakening economy, and that means slower job growth, almost certainly slower wage growth,” Baker told Truthout.
“The path we’re currently on,” he said, is “slowing growth so that we’re basically growing at a crawl.”
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