Dive Brief:
- Job cuts in the retail industry improved just slightly to 2,431 cuts in October compared to 2,577 in September, per a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday.
- However, Challenger said the “sector remains among the hardest hit this year,” having announced 88,664 job cuts so far. This marks a 145% increase from the 36,136 announced through October last year.
- The company reported 153,074 job cuts across all industries in October, which is up 175% from the same month in 2024. The private data comes as the federal government, for the second month in a row, is missing the release of its monthly jobs report Friday due to the government shutdown.
Dive Insight:
October turned out to be a bleak month for some retail employees who, just ahead of the holidays, found out their roles are being eliminated.
It was also a rough month overall, as it marked the highest job cut total in October in more than 20 years. Through the first 10 months of the year, U.S. employers have now cut more than 1 million jobs, according to Challenger, the highest total since 2020.
“October’s pace of job cutting was much higher than average for the month,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes.”
In retail, October brought on major layoff announcements from some of the industry’s biggest players.
Target announced it would cut 1,000 corporate staff and close 800 open roles — representing about 8% of its global headquarters workforce — as part of an effort to streamline its corporate structure. However, the impact is not immediate, with laid off employees receiving pay and benefits until Jan. 3.
E-commerce giant Amazon also announced it would cut about 14,000 corporate roles and will offer most employees 90 days to find a new position internally, if they wish to. Additionally, Puma in October revealed it plans to eliminate about 900 more corporate jobs globally and Carter’s said it will lay off about 300 corporate employees by the end of the year.
Some retailers are still focused on hiring for the busy holiday season though. For example, Dick’s Sporting Goods is aiming to hire 14,000 associates across its businesses, Amazon will again plan to hire 250,000 workers and Michael’s is planning to bring on 10,000 seasonal workers.