The Challenger, Gray, and Christmas jobs report for January kicks off 2026 with a miserable report.

U.S.-based employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, an increase of 118% from the 49,795 cuts announced in the same month last year. It is up 205% from the 35,553 job cuts announced in December.

January’s total is the highest for the month since 2009, when 241,749 job cuts were announced. It is the highest monthly total since October 2025, when 153,074 cuts were recorded.

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

Which Industries Cut the Most Jobs?

• Transportation: Transportation announced the highest number of job cuts in January with 31,243, primarily due to an announcement from UPS. The company announced it would cut 30,000 jobs after severing ties with Amazon.
• Technology: Technology announced 22,291 job cuts in January. The bulk of these came from Amazon, which announced 16,000 job cuts as it restructures its layers of management.
• Healthcare/Products: Healthcare companies and health products manufacturers, including Hospitals, announced 17,107 job cuts in January, the most for the industry since April 2020, when 19,453 job cuts were recorded. “Healthcare providers and hospital systems are grappling with inflation and high labor costs. Lower reimbursements from Medicaid and Medicare are also hitting hospital systems.
• Chemical: Chemical manufacturers announced 4,701 job cuts in January, primarily from one announcement by Dow Inc., which cited a shift to implementing artificial intelligence and automation. This is the highest monthly total for this sector since February 2016, when 6,640 job cuts were recorded. That month, the cuts were primarily due to a merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont.
• Media & News Cuts: The Media industry has announced 510 cuts in January, down 18% from the 624 cuts announced in January 2024. News, which Challenger tracks as a subset of Media and includes broadcast, digital, and print, has announced 65 job cuts in January, a 66% decrease from the 192 News cuts announced in the same month in 2025. It is the lowest January total since 2022, when no News cuts were recorded.

Hiring Plans

• Last month, employers announced 5,306 hiring plans, the lowest total for the month since Challenger began tracking hiring plans in 2009.
• Prior to last month’s total, 2023 saw the lowest January total for hiring with 5,376. It is down 13% from the 6,089 hiring plans announced in the same month last year.
• It is down 49% from the 10,496 hiring plans announced in December 2025.

Perhaps one can dismiss the cuts due to extreme concentration at a few industries. But there is no excuse for the lack of hires to the lowest in history.

Regarding Media Cuts

Yesterday, CNBC reported Washington Post begins widespread layoffs, sharply shrinking storied newspaper’s reach

The Washington Post began widespread layoffs on Wednesday that will drastically shrink the size of the storied newspaper, affecting all departments, according to a recording of the call shared with Reuters.

Executive Editor Matt Murray informed the staff of the cuts, which will cut across the international, editing, metro, and sports desks, and come just days after the more than 145-year-old newspaper scaled back its coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics amid mounting financial losses.

“For too long, we’ve operated with a structure that’s too rooted in the days when we were a quasi-monopoly local newspaper,” Murray said on the call, adding that “we need a new way forward and a sounder foundation.”

One Post reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity, called it a “bloodbath.”

The Washington Post last year made changes across several business functions and announced job cuts, saying then that the reductions would not impact its newsroom. The newspaper, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, had offered voluntary separation packages to employees across all functions in 2023 amid losses of $100 million.

Bezos Orders Deep Job Cuts at ‘Washington Post’

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In a newsroom Zoom call, Executive Editor Matt Murray called the move “a strategic reset” it needs to compete in the era of artificial intelligence. The paper had not evolved with the times, he said, and the changes were overdue in light of “difficult and even disappointing realities.”

Murray said the Post will shutter its sports desk, while keeping some sports reporters who will write feature stories. It will likewise close its Books section and suspend the signature podcast Post Reports.

The international desk will shrink dramatically. Among those laid off: the paper’s Ukraine bureau chief and correspondent, the latter of whom was in a war zone.

The paper’s entire Middle East desk was let go, according to their social media posts. So too was Caroline O’Donovan, the reporter who covers Amazon — the primary source of Bezos’ wealth.

“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” former Executive Editor Marty Baron said in a statement Wednesday.

While acknowledging that the media industry as a whole is struggling, Baron blamed Bezos for exacerbating the newspaper’s woes through “ill-conceived decisions,” including killing an endorsement in fall 2024 of Kamala Harris for president. That choice, which Bezos took responsibility for, led hundreds of thousands of subscribers to cancel their subscriptions.

It reaped rewards from readers too, exceeding 3 million paying subscribers. It is now far below that level, according to a person at the paper with knowledge. (The person spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears of being fired for speaking to the press.)

The New York Times reports the Washington Post laid off “30 percent of all its employees. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom.”

Based on the above, WaPo layoffs are between 300 and 400. Those layoffs will show up in Challenger next month.

These Challenger and other job cuts are happening despite a GDPNow 4.2 percent GDP nowcast for the fourth quarter of 2025.

GDP for the the first quarter of 2026 rates to be interesting. Job weakness is nearly everywhere.

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