Executive coaching company Challenger, Gray & Christmas revealed statistics on April 4th showing that U.S. employers reported 90,309 job cutbacks in March, a 7% rise from February.
This is the largest monthly total for planned layoffs since January 2023, when businesses reported 102,943 cutbacks. According to Andy Challenger, store shutdowns, bankruptcies, reorganization, and general cost-cutting are all contributing factors to companies laying off workers. In a statement, the Senior Vice President said that many organizations seem to be returning to a do more using less mentality.
Despite technology’s dominance so far this year, he added that industrial manufacturing and energy are among the areas that have eliminated more jobs than in 2023.
According to Challenger’s statistics, the government was the first to announce 36,044 job layoffs in March, followed by technology businesses with 14,224. According to Challenger, news outlets are still struggling with advertising and subscriber-based economic models, which is why the media sector announced 2,246 layoffs.
Among the companies that have announced layoffs is Ben & Jerry’s. Last month, Unilever, the parent firm of the ice cream producer, said that it would fire 7,500 people globally, and the credit reporting organization TransUnion cut 640 jobs. Dell said it will be laying off about 6,000 employees.
According to PNC senior economist Gus Faucher, job growth will continue in 2024 but at a much slower rate than in 2023. A little additional slack in the job market due to weaker growth could push the unemployment rate beyond 4% by year’s end.
According to the March jobs report issued this week, most of the employment went to foreign-born workers, including illegal immigrants. Reports show it is a big problem in President Biden’s economy. A 300,000 rise in nonfarm payrolls was reported for the March employment data, but the jobs added in March were part-time.
The Labor Department reports that nonfarm payrolls had a 275,000 job rise in February. The original figure for January showed 353,000 new jobs generated, but further revisions brought that number down to 229,000.
