Layoff announcements continued to decline in July, while hiring plans soared to the highest level for the month since 2022, the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Thursday.
US employers announced 33,429 job cuts last month, down from June’s total of around 46,000 to reach the lowest monthly amount in two years, Challenger said in a report.
“The pace of layoffs fell dramatically this summer,” Andy Challenger, the firm’s workplace expert and chief revenue officer, said in the report. “Layoff plans continue to be announced primarily in tech, and artificial intelligence is still the story, as investments in the technology reshape organizations.”
“Hiring has also increased over last year by 25%, so while AI is shifting the labor market, it is not dismantling it,” he continued.
The tech sector is now responsible for almost a third of this year’s 477,033 job-cut plans, Challenger said, and AI has been a frequent theme in layoff announcements. Visa, for example, said it would slash 7% of its workforce last month, mentioning AI in an internal memo, CNBC reported, though AI wasn’t the sole reason for the cuts.
Still, technology companies are also bringing on new workers: The sector was behind 2,470 planned hires last month, Challenger said. That number trailed hiring plans in the aerospace and defense industries, making this the best July for hiring plans since 2022, with employers expecting to add 16,095 workers overall.
“Employers are hiring more than they were at this point last year, which bucks the trend we’ve seen since 2020. The demand is showing up in aerospace, energy, and manufacturing, work that happens on a floor rather than a screen,” Challenger said.
Separately, on Wednesday the Indeed Hiring Lab reported in a survey of more than 100 prominent economists that job postings are only expected to dip slightly in the next year, with about half of economists polled seeing AI as “at least a mild drag” on employment. But the economists seemed to think software development would be among the fields poised both to benefit and face the most losses from AI.
What they did agree on, according to the survey: “The sectors economists expect to grow fastest over the next year, especially personal care & home health and nursing, are hands-on, in chronically short supply, and almost entirely beyond AI’s reach.”
Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at emma.ockerman@yahooinc.com.
Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter
Click here for the latest personal finance news to help you with investing, paying off debt, buying a home, retirement, and more
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
