A report from
employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. showed on Wednesday that
the U.S. businesses announced 47,999 job cuts in June, down 48.8 per cent from
the 93,816 layoffs claimed in May. This marked the weakest gain in job cuts since December 2024 (38,792). The June
reading was also 1.6 per cent below the figure for the corresponding month one
year prior (48,786).
According to
the report, the Consumer Products sector announced the largest number of job
cuts last month (9,500, or 19.8
per cent of all). It
was followed by the Services (4,463, or 9.3 per cent of all), Financial (4,164,
or 8.7 per cent of all), Health Care and Products (4,068, or 8.5 per cent of
all), Retail (4,063, or 8.5 per cent of all) and Government (3,801, or 7.9 per
cent of all) sectors.
In the first half of the year, U.S. employers announced plans to cut 744,308 jobs,
up 71.2 per cent from the 434,645 cuts announced during the corresponding
period a year ago. This represented the highest
year-to-date total since 2020, when 1,585,047 job cuts were planned.
From January
through June, Government led all industries in job cut announcements with 288,628
(or 38.8 per cent of all announced job cuts), 286,679 of which were due to DOGE-related
cost-cutting. It was followed by Retail (79,865, or 10.7 per cent of all cuts),
Technology (76,214, or 10.2 per cent), and Services (48,736, or 6.5 per cent).
Commenting on
the latest report, Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray
& Christmas Inc., said that the bulk of companies cited economic conditions
last month. “We saw some DOGE activity and have tracked over 2,000 jobs directly
attributed to tariffs this year, but for the most part it was a quiet June,” he
noted. Challenger added that retailers were one of the hardest hit business
sectors by tariffs, as well as inflation and uncertainty. “If consumer spending
continues to fall, it could mean more job losses in this industry,” he
suggested.