Companies are getting worse at laying people off

Last week’s jobs numbers may have shown a drop in the number of pink slips hitting workers’ desks in May, but don’t be fooled: Layoffs are alive and well in 2025.

In the first half of the year, US employers let go of nearly 745,000 people, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s the second-highest number for the period since 2009 – surpassed only by the first six months of 2020, when Covid essentially shut down the global economy. 

The cuts are part of a broader trend. About 20 per cent of S&P 500 companies have fewer employees today than they did a decade ago, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.