The numbers are in and they aren’t pretty. Last month, U.S.-based employers axed more than 75,000 jobs, a 193% increase from only one month earlier, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“[The] surge in job cuts reflects growing economic uncertainty and shifting market dynamics,” said Andrew Challenger, the company’s senior vice president. “The labor market overall is softening.”
Among those hardest hit were in tech—no surprise there—but also education.
The cuts come as teachers and educators across the country start the school year with increasing challenges, including a new COVID surge and school shootings.
The already strapped education sector has seen 25,396 job cuts this year through August—up 222% from the same period last year.
In the technology sector, automation and AI adoption is driving cuts across roles and functions, the report says. With tech talent still in high demand, however, the report predicts that many of these professionals will land at new companies both in and out of the tech industry.
But as we enter a slower hiring period, it may take longer than at any other point in the last decade. That’s because according to Challenger’s tracking, announcements about hiring plans have fallen to the lowest year-to-date total since the firm first started tracking announced hiring plans in 2005.
The report comes ahead of Friday’s jobs report, which Wall Street is eagerly awaiting and which will determine the Fed’s next rate cut. It’s just another sign of growing uncertainty as the U.S. heads into the last quarter of the year.