'So Much for the Golden Age of America': Layoffs Hit 17-Year High Under Trump

While President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that the US economy is the hottest in the world, new data released Thursday shows that announced layoffs in January hit a high not seen since the Great Recession of 2009.

The new report by corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows that that US employers announced more than 108,000 job cuts last month, more than double the nearly 50,000 job cuts that they announced one year before.

In fact, the announced job cuts were higher than any January since 2009, when the economy was in the middle of a global financial crisis.

Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said that the January 2026 job cuts were "a high number" and a signal that "employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026."

The biggest cuts on the month came from UPS, which announced that it would be slashing 30,000 jobs, and Amazon, which announced workforce reductions of 16,000 jobs.

"So much for the 'Golden Age of America'," said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), as he noted layoffs surging to the highest levels in 17 years.

The healthcare industry, which has been a rare bright spot in terms of job growth in recent months, announced more than 17,000 jobs cuts in January, the highest number in that sector since April 2020 when the US was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report also showed that artificial intelligence was only responsible for 7% of layoffs announced last month, although Challenger acknowledged that it's "difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically."

Additionally, the report found that US employers had announced just over 5,300 hiring plans in January, which it noted was "the lowest total for the month since Challenger began tracking hiring plans in 2009."

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, pointed to "the worst job numbers since the Great Recession" in a social media post. The union leader noted that the 5,300 hiring plans were "the lowest one record since the early 2000s," while adding that "layoffs are up over 100% since last January, and over 300% since January of 2024."

Mohamed El-Erian, economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, described the Challenger report as "sobering," and pointed to a potentially ominous trend regarding wealth inequality in the US.

"These layoffs are occurring while GDP continues to grow at approximately 4%," he observed in a social media post, "accelerating the decoupling of employment from economic growth—a phenomenon that, if it persists, has profound economic, political, and social implications."

Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, said that the job cuts were yet more evidence that Trump and Republicans' economic policies were a failure.

"'If you give more tax cuts to corporations, those corporations will create more jobs,' is the lie politicians who are funded by corporations tell people to justify giving their corporate donors more tax cuts," she wrote. "Trump’s corporate and billionaire tax cuts create profits—not jobs."

Laura Ullrich, director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said during an interview with ABC News published on Tuesday that workers in the current economy are "hugging onto [their current job] more than they normally would" because so few companies are taking on new staff.