:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2259969124-8e446839e275469097d75bed8b6050d6.jpg "The Job Market Froze Over This Winter")
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Key Takeaways
- Job openings fell to their lowest since the pandemic in December and job cut announcements were the highest in any January since 2009.
- Tariffs, deportations, and AI are all slowing down the job market.
- A better indicator of the health of the labor market is due next week when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its delayed jobs report for January.
Layoff announcements were up and job openings down this winter as the job market’s hiring freeze deepened, according to two barometers of the job market Thursday.
The number of job openings fell to 6.5 million in December from 6.9 million in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Thursday. That was the fewest since 2020. Another red flag popped up in consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s layoff report for January, which showed companies announced 108,000 job cuts, the most for any January since 2009, and the fewest hires for that month since the firm began tracking hires that year.
The indicators were unmistakable signs that the job market is being dragged down by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the immigration crackdown, and to a lesser extent, the rise of AI software.
What This Means For the Economy
The deepening job market slowdown poses a growing risk for the economy, which stayed resilient through economic policy shocks in 2025.
“The labor market spent much of 2025 bending, but not breaking—and ended the year perilously close to a definitive breaking point,” Cory Stahle, senior economist at job site Indeed, wrote in a commentary.
The layoff rate remained low, suggesting that employers have not turned to large-scale cuts yet, but the risks of that are growing, several economists said.
“While announcements have not risen to a degree that signal a mass loss in employment, the pickup is a reminder that firms are not opposed to cutting headcount when other options have been exhausted,” economists at Wells Fargo led by Sarah House wrote in a commentary.
The bureau will provide a more comprehensive look at the job market next week when it releases its January report on job creation and the unemployment rate. The report was initially expected to be published on Friday, but was delayed by this week’s brief government shutdown.
Forecasters expect the economy to have added 60,000 jobs, up from 50,000 in December, and the unemployment rate to stay stable at 4.4% according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
