Challenger released its July job cuts report this morning and it showed a 139% y/y increase in layoff announcements. While I usually provide context to downplay such eye-popping figures, in this case the y/y figure isn't too far off from how elevated job cuts are relative to their pre-COVID norm: 98% above normal for July. Details in the 🧵

On an absolute basis, announced job cuts were ~31k above normal for July, with most of the lift coming from the West (20.6k above normal), followed by the East (5.3k), Midwest (4.3k) and South (0.5k).

On a cumulative basis, announced layoffs have been nearly 1m above the pre-COVID norm since they started surging back in Nov '22. The West still accounts for the bulk of the excess layoffs (505k), but the East (433k) has nearly caught up due to the DOGE layoffs announced earlier this year.

Drilling down to the industry level, the impact of the DOGE cuts clearly stands out, but the Tech sector continues to dominate cumulative layoff announcements since Nov '22.

Tech also led the way for the top 5 industries for layoffs in July above normal (13k), along with Warehousing (4.7k), Media (4.7k), Auto (3.8k) and Telecom (3.8k).

Now, it should be noted that Challenger doesn’t have a great track record for predicting initial jobless claims (which remained relatively steady) or layoffs more broadly as reflected in the recent JOLTS report, which was through June. But this is something to watch as we start to get more data on the July labor market starting with this Friday’s jobs report.