U.S. employers announced more than 108,000 job cuts in January, marking the highest total for the month in 17 years, and up 118% from January of 2025.

According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the 108,435 cuts in the first month of 2026 were up 205% from December 2025. The highest portion of layoffs came from the transportation sector, driven primarily by the 30,000 job cuts announced by UPS in late January as part of the wind-down of its partnership with Amazon. The next most impacted industry was tech, with the bulk of layoffs coming from Amazon's own recent announcement of 16,000 cuts. Contract loss was the leading reason for announced cuts across all sectors for the month, followed by market and economic conditions, restructuring, and department closings.

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

U.S. companies also announced just 5,306 new hires in January, which was the weakest total for the month since CG&C began tracking data in 2009. That pushed the ratio of announced layoffs to hiring plans to one of its widest gaps on record, showing how dramatically employers have pulled back on workforce expansion heading into 2026.

Artificial intelligence continued to play a sizable role in job losses as well, with the technology cited as the reason for 7% of total cuts in January. That was more than double the average of 3% since the reason was first tracked in 2003, all while companies like Amazon have already started hinting at plans for AI-related workforce reductions in the months and years to come.