U.S. workers are being laid off at levels not seen since the Great Recession in 2009, all thanks to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
A new report from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, an international firm that helps laid-off workers find new jobs, said that job losses spiked a whopping 245 percent to 172,017 last month, higher than any month since the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020, and the highest in any February since 2009.
Just The biggest source of lost jobs comes from the federal government, with 62,242 announced cuts from 17 different agencies, according to Challenger. Government layoffs amounted to 62,530 workers in January and February, a staggering 41,311 percent increase over 2024.
So, even without the government layoffs, it would still be about a 100% increase.
Maybe a strong strategy would be to start with the 100%, in the private sector, and then bring out the bigger complete number.
But since the government has stopped paying bills for stuff it doesn’t like, many of those layoffs in the private sector are probably due to DOGE, too …
Yes, exactly. I think the statement is stronger said with the 100% increase in layoffs, 250% including doge.
Said the other way as devil’s advocate, it is easier to divert the focus, saying that the numbers are just a spike from government efficiency. Lazy government workers shouldn’t have been leeching off the government in the first place. It will even out in a couple months. (I don’t believe this)