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Amazon is the latest big company to announce layoffs, deepening concerns ahead of the Fed’s meeting this week that the labor market is weakening. Amazon’s 14,000 cuts could ultimately hit 30,000, about 10% of its corporate staff. (Warehouse and seasonal hiring are unaffected for now.)
Nearly 1 million American workers have lost their jobs so far this year, the most since 2009, excluding the spike in spring 2020. Tech companies — the industry with the easiest access to capital right now — are leading the cuts, with Intel, Microsoft, Meta, and others contributing to more than 107,000 jobs eliminated this year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. But cuts at Target, Exxon, and PwC show the pain goes beyond Silicon Valley.
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The cuts add complexity to an already fuzzy labor market. Some economists think Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee’s four horsemen — vacancy rate (job openings per unemployed person), job-finding rate (how quickly unemployed people are getting those jobs), the layoff rate, and the unemployment rate — show a labor market headed towards balance, accounting for slower immigration. Others, including a potential Fed chair, disagree.