This January was marked by more layoffs than any January since 2009.
Data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement company, shows that US employers announced 108,435 job cuts in the first month of the year, an increase of 118% from the year before.
Major companies have said they're trimming staff this year. In January, Amazon announced it would cut 16,000 corporate roles, after cutting 14,000 jobs in October last year.
The 30,000 layoffs announced by UPS in January helped make transportation the sector with the most job cuts, the Challenger report said.
Elsewhere, Citi said in January it plans to cut around 10% of its workforce, or 20,000 employees.
Challenger said on Thursday that hiring also stalled in January, with employers announcing 5,306 new hiring plans — the weakest start to the year since it began tracking this data in 2009.
"Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January," Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement accompanying the report.
"It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026," he added.
The key reasons for the job cuts, per Challenger, were "contract loss," "market and economic conditions," and "restructuring." AI was cited as the key reason for around 7% of the cuts.
"It's difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically," Challenger said. "We know leaders are talking about AI, many companies want to implement it in operations, and the market appears to be rewarding companies that mention it."
February 5, 2026 — This story has been updated to reflect that the layoffs are higher than they have been in any January since 2009, not a 17-year high.
