America’s Weird Job Market: Layoffs Soar, Jobless Claims Drop

Layoffs versus Jobless Claims the American job story depends entirely on which numbers you choose to look at. According to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, companies have announced more than 1.1 million layoffs so far this year. That is the highest total since the pandemic of 2020, and more than 50% higher than the same period last year. November alone saw more than 70,000 plan cuts with restructuring, artificial intelligence and tariffs, all cited as reasons. At the same time, federal data shows that weekly jobless claims have fallen to around 191,000. This is the lowest level in more than three years. Now, if you're a little confused, if you're scratching your head, you're not alone. Employers are slowly hiring and they're trimming certain divisions, but they're still holding tightly to the workers they already have. So this is not a mass firing crisis in every workplace. It's something subtler, a cooling job market where opportunities shrink, certain sectors take the hits, and once you lose a job, you face much tougher competition. Finding the Next okay, so what's the real message here? If you're looking for economic bad news, you will find it. If you're looking for good economic news, you'll find it too. There's economic data everywhere. Be very careful. If you go into this with a bias, saying, I don't like this politician or that politician, therefore I want to find data that will back up my thesis, you will find it. Confirmation bias could distort your vision of the world dramatically. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So, as I mentioned to you, it's a good news, bad news situation. You know, 1.17 million layoffs in the year so far, the highest since 2020. That certainly doesn't sound good. 54% higher than last year sounds awful. But then you look at the jobless claims. Only 191,000 in the last month, lowest in three years. That sounds like it's great news. So what is it? I'm going to give it to you straight. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. I'm not trying to spin things one way or the other. Our economy is kind of humming along. If you want a negative scenario, I'll give you one. If you want a positive scenario, I'll give you one. It is, in fact, a mixed bag. The negative scenario is if it weren't for the massive, massive, massive AI spending bubble, we would already be in a recession. Almost all the growth in our entire economy is because of people excited. Some would say there's irrational exuberance for all things AI. And if it weren't for that, we would already be in a recession. Now, the stock market is not the economy, the economy is not the stock market. But if you just took the 10 largest tech companies that are all gorging on money from AI investments, if you took them out of The S&P 500, our stock market would be completely flat. All the growth is really coming from 10 companies. So our stock market would be flat. If you took out all the new hiries going to build things like data centers and electricity to fuel all this AI, our unemployment rate would be dramatically higher. There's no doubt about it. We would clearly, clearly be in a recession. To be clear, we're not in a recession now. But many economic experts believe there's a fragility in this economy that is new, that is different because it's so dependent on just 10 companies, any one of which could see a drop in their stock price by 60, 70%. Because all big tech companies have drops like that from time to time. Any one of those could pull the plug on the entire stock market. Let's not forget that 10 technology companies now account for 40% of the entire publicly traded markets of US companies. 40% from 10 companies. If you look at the entire worldwide economy of publicly traded companies in every country, United states, the top 10 US tech companies make up 20% of the entire worldwide market. So all of us are kind of dependent on a handful of companies. Number one, two, continued belief, faith, hope that this AI thing keeps taking off and keeps doing well and the money keeps coming. I mean, one of the fears is frankly that OpenAI or someone does really well. They create a general intelligence AI. It's wildly successful, it makes trillions of dollars. But all the other companies suddenly become irrelevant and all of their employees get fired. The market cap of all of those companies go to zero. Yeah, there's one big winner. And if you don't have all your stock, all your portfolio, all your investment in that one company, you are sol. I mean, that is one of the legitimate fears of that serious people are worried about right now. Let's go through some more of the facts. November plans more than 71,000 job cuts. Again, this is coming from the U.S. labor Department. The October cuts reported at 153,000, a 22 year November record. So mixed data tariffs are linked to nearly 8,000 job cuts so far. I'm frankly surprised not more. And I find it a little difficult to believe that that could be measured precisely. The announced hires for the whole year are 497,000, well below the previous year. But as I mentioned, the weekly jobless claims came in at 191,000, very low. So we're seeing mixed signals. And again, to be fair, inflation is not off the charts. It's at around 3% now. Historically, not our first choice. 2% is what the Fed likes. That's their benchmark. But compared to a lot of countries, or compared to the United states in the 70s, 3% is almost nirvana. True, it is higher than the 2.4% inflation we had in November 2024 when there was another leader in the White House. But it's not been hugely, hugely changed. So. So what is my advice to you? You and I can't control the economy. You know, there's an old expression, it's a recession when your neighbors lost his job. It's a depression when you've lost your job. Now, I want you thinking about your town, your community, your state, your country, the world economy. But I also want you to think of it just as they do on the airplane in the event of an emergency, you got to give yourself oxygen. Before you can help anyone else, you've got to help yourself. The economy is changing. More and more things in our economy are being changed by artificial intelligence. If your industry has not been radically changed, revamped, if your industry hasn't already seen massive layoffs because of AI, it's only a matter of time. Technology always changes. There's always going to be winners and losers. Can government sometimes soften the blow for the losers or put up barriers to create people who otherwise would win? Not winning as quickly? Yeah, but you and I can't count on. And that's why I want you thinking every single day, how do you make yourself more valuable? How do you create more value for your customers, people in your industry, your clients, associates you work with, that's ultimately the only key to being viable in our economy and not ending up. One of these statistics of being laid off. Now, you could be a great worker and be laid off. Personally, I've been fired many times, but I've never been laid off. You, you can be great at your job and be laid off, but if you're constantly trying to meet as many people in your industry as possible, if you're constantly building bridges, constantly networking, constantly forming alliances with people in your industry on LinkedIn and elsewhere, you're not going to be unemployed for very long because you're going to be in demand. That's what I want for you, and I hope that's really what you take away from these statistics. Yeah, things are choppy, things are up and down. Nobody really knows the future. Well, I'm telling you, I do know the future. If you can consistently learn new, hard skills and use those skills to deliver value to people, you'll always have a job. That is my. Or at least until General AI makes every single job irrelevant. But until then, you will, in fact, have a job.