Layoff plans for December hit lowest monthly level since 2024 in ‘positive sign,’ Challenger says

Employers announced 35,553 layoffs in December in the lowest monthly total since July 2024, despite sweeping job cuts in the fourth quarter, according to a Thursday report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“The year closed with the fewest announced layoff plans all year,” Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in the report. “While December is typically slow, this coupled with higher hiring plans, is a positive sign after a year of high job cutting plans.”

Hiring plans for December, at 10,496, also reached the highest total for the month since 2022.

Read more: Worried about job security? Take these 5 steps now to protect your finances.

Still, the picture was more dire when looking at 2025 in total: Planned hires were down 34% from 2024, hitting 507,647, in the lowest year-to-date total since 2010, Challenger said.

Employers announced 1.2 million job cuts across all of 2025, a 58% hike from 2024’s 761,358 and the highest level since 2020. Layoff announcements just in the final quarter of 2025 — 259,948 planned cuts — were the worst for the fourth quarter since 2008, Challenger said.

The year’s cuts were led by government reductions after DOGE-led layoffs cut federal workers loose, though layoffs in the tech sector and business services sector were also higher last year compared to 2024.

Moving forward, any further layoff announcements will put workers in a tough spot: The number of job openings fell in November according to the latest government data, while the hiring rate was a paltry 3.2%. There were 1.1 unemployed people for every available job, the highest level since early 2021.