Job cuts jump to a five-year high

California employers announced 173,022 layoffs in the first IL months of this year.

- By QUEENIE WonG

Job cuts across the country are the highest they have been in five years, led by layoffs in California and cutbacks in Washington.

California employers announced 173,022 job cuts from January to November, up nearly 14% from the same period last year, according to the latest monthly report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Nationwide, the total number of cuts climbed 54% to 1.17 million, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in the report released Thursday.

That is the highest they have been since 2020, when COVID forced mass layoffs. The last time national job cuts were this high without a pandemic was 2009.

Much of California’s economy can be divided into high-growth regions such as Los Angeles and parts of the Bay Area, buoyed by a surge in venture-capital investment, while other regions are being hit by tariffs, policy uncertainty and the government’s crackdown on immigrant labor, according to the UCLA Anderson Forecast, released earlier this week.

Nearly 70% of all U.S. venture-capital spending flowed into California in the first half of this year, the forecast found. Los Angeles and Orange counties are drawing heavy funding into aerospace and defense, while the Bay Area continues to absorb major artificial-intelligence investments, widening the divide between capital-rich tech hubs and more vulnerable regions.