Challenger says the layoffs in January were the most to start a year since 2009

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

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

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

With recent storylines focused on the no-hire, no-fire labor market, the Challenger data suggests that the layoff part of the equation may be increasing.

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

To be sure, if employers are ramping up plans to lay off workers, it doesn’t show 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, although the spike likely had something to do with the brutal winter storm that battered large parts of the country. The long-term trend was still the lowest since October 2024.

Some high-profile layoff announcements have raised fears of broader labor market losses. Amazon, UPS and Dow Inc have recently announced massive job cuts. Indeed, January was the highest level of traffic from a sector perspective, largely due to plans by UPS to cut more than 30,000 jobs. Technology was second behind Amazon’s announcement 16,000 to cut corporate level jobs.

Planned hiring fell 13% from January 2025 and 49% from December.

Challenger data may also be volatile and not related to official statistics. However, more than 100 companies filed with the Labor Department in January under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Rules have notified significant layoffs.

In a separate report Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings fell sharply to 6.54 million in December, a slide of 386,000. The decline in available positions caused the ratio of jobs available to unemployed workers to 0.87 to 1, falling to 2 to 1 in mid-2022.

ADP, private employers reported on Wednesday Only 22,000 jobs were added In January.