Hiring plans among US employers for the year through September were at their lowest since 2009, according to a new report, underscoring the labor market’s stagnant state.
The weaker planned headcount was largely fueled by a steep drop in seasonal hiring announcements, the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report Thursday.
So far this year, employers have planned to add 204,939 jobs, compared to 483,590 at this point last year. The last time year-to-date hiring was this sluggish was 2009, when companies recorded 169,385 new hires as the economy was clawing its way out of the Great Recession.
Challenger also said it tracked 100,800 seasonal hiring plans last month, down from 401,850 announced by the beginning of October last year, the report said.
Meanwhile, planned job cuts year to date, at 946,426, were at their highest year-to-date total since 2020, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said, though they plummeted 37% from August.
“It’s very likely job cut plans are going to surpass a million for the first time since 2020,” Andy Challenger, senior vice president and labor expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement.
“Previous periods with this many job cuts occurred either during recessions or, as was the case in 2005 and 2006, during the first wave of automations that cost jobs in manufacturing and technology.”
This year’s job cut announcements were driven by federal government layoffs, businesses’ responses to economic uncertainty caused by tariffs and inflation, and store closings, among other factors. AI was less of a driver, though 17,375 cuts were “explicitly attributed to artificial intelligence,” the report said.
Because the government shutdown is likely to delay the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report for September — originally scheduled for release on Friday — fresh workforce data from private firms like Challenger and payroll processor ADP is drawing increased attention as market watchers search for signs of the labor market’s health.
Read more: What are jobless claims, and why do they matter?
Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at [email protected].
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