{"id":428036,"date":"2026-03-05T19:40:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T12:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/03\/us-february-challenger-layoffs-48-307k-vs-108-435k-prior\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T19:40:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T12:40:56","slug":"us-february-challenger-layoffs-48-307k-vs-108-435k-prior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-february-challenger-layoffs-48-307k-vs-108-435k-prior-428036\/","title":{"rendered":"US February Challenger layoffs 48.307k vs 108.435k prior"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">US-based employers announced 48,307 job cuts in February 2026, and that is down ~72% compared to the same month last year. Some good news is that through February, employers announced 156,742 job cuts in total. That marks the lowest January-to-February total since 2022. But when you put things into better context, it is the fifth-highest January-February total since 2009.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">The tech sector once again is the one seen slashing jobs the most with 11,039 job cuts in February. That brings the year-to-date total to 33,330 in 2026 so far. Of note, this marks a 51% increase to the 22,042 cuts in this sector announced in the same period last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">Challenger notes that:<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">&#8220;Tech is responding to a number of pressures right now. AI is the big story, but there are also global regulatory concerns, a slowdown in digital advertising driven by tariffs and economic uncertainty, and higher costs to both employ workers and access funding, forcing companies to make difficult decisions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">Adding that:<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-align-justify\">&#8220;February\u2019s dip is a nice reprieve from the elevated job cut plans to start the year. With US involvement in a growing war in Iran, the end of Q1 may bring more layoff plans as companies tighten belts amid uncertainty and higher costs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US-based employers announced 48,307 job cuts in February 2026, and that is down ~72% compared to the same month last year. Some good news is that through February, employers announced 156,742 job&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}