U.S. Companies Finally Put Down the Chainsaw As December Layoffs Drop 50%...

Employment secured. 

December showed up with a much-needed uplifting. Planned layoffs clocked in at roughly 35,000 for the month, which is not exactly “booming economy” energy, but compared to November’s absolute bloodletting, it felt like someone finally put the chainsaw down. That number was down about 50% month-over-month and lower than December of last year, making it the quietest layoff month we’ve seen in over a year. Cue the insufferable LinkedIn posts incoming. 

(Source: Fonzi AI) 

Started from the bottom now we’re here. If you recall, the year as a whole was ugly. Total layoffs in 2025 hit roughly 1.2 million, up nearly 60% from 2024 and the worst annual tally since the pandemic. The fourth quarter alone was the nastiest stretch since 2008, which is not a comparison you want when buying a brinks truck of Christmas gifts for the fam. So yes, December came out on top… but the year definitely didn’t. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the slowdown in December is partly seasonal… companies are bad at firing people between holiday parties and year-end accounting… but it also reflects something more structural. After a year of aggressive cost-cutting, many firms have already done the dirty work. Headcount’s been trimmed, budgets have been reset, and the easiest targets of the job guillotine are gone.  

(Source: NY Post) 

The biggest contributor to the carnage in 2025 wasn’t tech, retail, or even manufacturing. It was the government. The Department of Government Efficiency… DOGE (heat flashes triggered)... led a purge of federal workers early in the year that left entire agencies hollowed out. Those cuts alone skewed the annual numbers higher and explain why so many policy analysts are still quietly furious while markets barely noticed. And of course, your Karens media wasn’t far behind. More than 17,000 layoffs across the industry this year, which tracks with the ongoing realization that ad dollars don’t magically reappear just because someone rebrands a newsroom as a “platform.” December had zero announced media cuts, but that’s less a sign of recovery and more a sign that there wasn’t much left to cut.

AI also made its presence felt in a very on-brand way. Roughly 55,000 layoffs were directly attributed to automation and artificial intelligence in 2025, which sounds abstract until you realize that many of those jobs weren’t replaced by new roles… they simply just got the Ctrl+Alt+Delete treatment.  Additionally, tariffs showed up too, quietly suffocating another few thousand positions as supply chains absorbed higher costs and passed the pain downstream. 

(Source: Giphy) 

So yeah… December didn’t necessarily show us strength, but more of a pause. Companies stopped swinging the axe not because they’re confident, but because they’ve already done enough damage to keep margins intact for now. The layoffs that happened this year were front-loaded, brutal, and intentional. The absence of new ones doesn’t mean the system healed. It means it is adjusted. Translation: This is what layoffs look like after a year of nothing left to lose. Meaning, for now… America is employed, in our land, and flourishing. That is, until the sh*t really hits the fan. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.