Layoffs in January were the highest to start a year since 2009, Challenger says

Layoff plans hit their highest January total since the global financial crisis while hiring intentions reached their lowest since the same period, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday.

U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009, while the economy was in the final months of its steepest downturn since the Great Depression.

At the same time, companies announced just 5,306 new hires, also the lowest January since 2009, which is when Challenger began tracking such data. The crisis recession officially ended in March 2009.

With the recent narrative centering on a no-hire, no-fire labor market, the Challenger data suggests that the layoff part of the equation could be stepping up.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for the firm. “It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026.”

To be sure, if employers are stepping up plans to furlough workers, it hasn’t been showing up much in official government data.

However, initial jobless claims for the week ended Jan. 31 totaled a seasonally adjusted 231,000, the highest since early December though the spike likely had something to do with a brutal winter storm that hit large parts of the country. The longer-term trend still was at its lowest since October 2024.

Some high-profile layoff announcements have boosted fears of wider damage in the labor market. Amazon, UPS and Dow Inc. recently have announced sizeable job cuts. Indeed, transportation had the highest level from a sector standpoint in January, due largely to plans from UPS to cut more than 30,000 workers. Technology was second on the back of Amazon’s announcement to shed 16,000 mostly corporate level jobs.

Planned hiring dropped 13% from January 2025 and was off 49% from December.

Challenger data also can be volatile and not correlated to official statistics. However, filings with the Labor Department in January under Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification regulations indicate more than 100 companies have given notice of significant layoffs.

In a separate report Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings fell sharply in December to 6.54 million, a slide of 386,000 on a monthly basis and down more than 900,000 from the October level. Openings are now at their lowest since September 2020.

The decrease in available positions put the ratio of available jobs to unemployed workers at 0.87 to 1, down from more than 2 to 1 at its peak in mid-2022.

On Wednesday, ADP reported that private employers added just 22,000 jobs in January.