With more good news about the job market, why are we hearing about so many layoffs?
Layoff announcements at big companies –like Cisco, this week–can seem at odds with low unemployment claim numbers and positive monthly job reports.
Cisco announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs — about 5% of its workforce — this week. It’s the latest in the drumbeat of high-profile layoffs that have been making headlines since the start of the year, particularly in tech and media companies, from Google and Microsoft to Paramount and the Los Angeles Times.
And yet, we keep getting positive indicators about the labor market. Like today’s data on initial jobless claims: those fell last week by more than expected, for the second week in a row. And January’s employment report showed better than expected job growth. So how do we make sense of this seeming disconnect?
First, some statistics. The U.S. workforce is big. Like 160 million people. So job cuts of 4,000 at Cisco or 34,000 across the tech industry don’t actually make a huge dent.
They’re also pretty normal, says ZipRecruiter chief economist Julia Pollak.
“Companies are constantly restructuring, doubling down on bits that work, unwinding bits that didn’t work and shifting people around,” Pollak said. “About 20 million people are laid off or fired each year.”
Layoffs have increased since their record lows a few years ago, says Layla O’Kane, senior economist at Lightcast. But they’re not even at pre-pandemic levels. They’re just at places you’ve heard of.
“These layoffs are happening to really visible companies that a lot of people think of as maybe aspirational places to work,” O’Kane said.
And the factors behind many of these cuts don’t apply to the whole economy, says Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, a strategic consulting arm of Ernst & Young.
“We are seeing some sectors where there was perhaps overhiring, that are seeing a more pronounced correction in terms of their workforce and more pronounced number of layoffs,” Daco said.
Meanwhile, industries like health care and education can’t hire fast enough.
But that’s not where the headlines are, says Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of the White House national economic council.
“Focus on layoffs, I think, conveys an impression to people that the economy is in worse condition than it’s in,” he said.
Inflation and economic uncertainty, he says, have made the public particularly attuned to bad news.