A Wave of US Layoffs Flash Early Warning Sign for Job Market [View all]
Source: Bloomberg
November 3, 2025 at 6:00 AM EST
When Starbucks Corp. fired 900 corporate employees in September, economists hardly batted an eye. After all, the coffee chain had already done a February culling as part of new management’s drive to get the Frappuccino maker back on track. In October, Target Corp. eliminated 1,800 roles to help the beleaguered retailer move faster. For each corporate cutback, there’s been a clear explanation: Amazon.com (14,000 corporate jobs) blamed artificial intelligence; Paramount (1,000 workers) just completed a merger; Molson Coors (400 jobs) can’t get carb-conscious consumers to drink enough beer.
Separately, each announcement can be read as a one-off. Yet taken together, some economists worry that the recent spate of cuts is starting to look a little less like individual belt-tightening and more like a warning sign.
“You’ve got a substantial number of well-established companies making pretty big head cuts,” says Dan North, senior economist at Allianz Trade Americas. You might start to wonder if “these aren’t random.”
It’s been harder than normal to get a grasp on the US labor market lately, with several agencies that produce key economic data, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, going dark during the government shutdown. Even before that, President Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize the US government left holes in the sprawling federal statistical system. But private datasets have helped fill in some of the gaps.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-03/the-low-hire-low-fire-us-economy-seems-to-be-over?srnd=homepage-americas
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They should have mentioned UPS too - UPS cuts 48,000 jobs in the year to date as its turnaround continues
They did include the government in a graph -
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