More than 1 million workers in America have been laid off so far in 2025, according to the latest tally of announced job cuts from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The jobs span nearly every major industry, but layoffs have hit tech and government jobs the hardest. Here’s what you need to know, and which tech companies have had the largest round of layoffs in 2025.
2025 layoff announcements surpass 1 million
Nearly every week this year, there have been headlines about layoffs hitting America’s workers.
The latest report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas adds up layoff announcements from U.S. employers through the end of October. According to the report, 1,099,500 workers have lost their jobs due to layoffs.
Given that those numbers don’t include November layoffs, and we are only at the beginning of December, it’s a certainty that the figure will rise before the end of the year.
Worse, the 1,099,500 job cuts are 65% higher than the 664,839 job cuts announced through October 2024.
This year’s figure also exceeds the 761,358 full-year 2024 job cuts by 44%. And to put the 2025 figures into greater perspective, Challenger, Gray & Christmas says this year’s job cuts are at their highest levels since 2020, when there were 2,304,755 through that October—many spurred by the pandemic.
Government and tech account for most layoffs
While layoffs have hit nearly every industry in 2025, two sectors were impacted more than others: government and tech.
Government worker layoffs account for the most job losses, many stemming from cuts made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), then led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas calls this the “DOGE Impact” and states that it “remains the leading reason for job cut announcements in 2025.”
In total, those cuts amount to 307,638 for the year through October. That figure includes 293,753 direct layoffs of federal workers and contractors, along with an additional 20,976 layoffs due to a “DOGE Downstream Impact.”
Challenger, Gray & Christmas says these additional layoffs are a reflection of “the loss of federal funding to private and non-profit entities.”
After government-related layoffs, the sector next most affected by job cuts was the tech industry. Challenger, Gray & Christmas says that through October 2025, 141,159 tech workers lost their jobs due to layoffs.
Overall, the top five sectors with the most job cuts in 2025 through October are:
- Government: 307,638
- Technology: 141,159
- Warehousing: 90,418
- Retail: 88,664
- Services: 63,580
Tech companies lead private-sector layoffs in 2025
After removing sweeping federal government job cuts from the figures, the tech industry accounted for the most layoffs so far in 2025.
That’s little surprise considering that hardly a week went by this year without additional rounds of tech layoffs making the news.
Meanwhile, some Big Tech companies made an outsized contribution to 2025’s tech layoffs. According to data from layoff tracking website Layoffs.fyi, the largest rounds of job cuts from U.S. tech companies so far in 2025 have come from the following:
- Intel
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- HP
- Salesforce
- Meta
- Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
It’s worth noting that while any layoffs this year are devastating to the workers involved and their families, Layoffs.fyi’s data shows that 2025 has so far seen fewer tech layoffs than in years past.
Layoffs.fyi’s data currently shows that 120,444 tech employees were laid off globally by 239 tech companies in 2025 so far. That compares to 152,922 tech employees laid off from 551 tech companies in 2024, and 264,220 tech employees laid off from 1,193 tech companies in 2023.
The final deadline for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
