Over the past three months about 270,000 employees were laid off in the United States, this is a sign for the Fed that its rate hike strategy is finally paying off, according to data from the credit reallocation company Challenger, Gray & Christma.
The data provided by this specialized firm is equivalent to more than four times the number of layoffs during the same period of the previous year.
“Given the ongoing rate hikes and companies controlling spending, it is likely that mass layoffs continue we see,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
While the numbers are still low by historical standards, the number of layoffs has steadily increased since last fall.
Weekly jobless claims, a layoff rate, rose from about 200,000 in January to more than 240,000 at the end of Marchaccording to data released by the Department of Labor.
Layoffs announced this year in the technology sector have already exceeded the total for all of last year. If this continues, the technology could endure the worst year on record. overcoming the cuts of 2001 and 2002when the dot-com bubble burst.
In recent months, giants such as Amazon, Google, parent company Facebook, Meta, Microsoft, PayPal and Yahoo have announced major layoffs. eliminated tens of thousands of jobs.
The companies reported that the layoffs were due, among other things, to high inflation affecting the sector and increasing their wages during the pandemic this caused bureaucracy within the companies.
Continuous claims for unemployment benefits, a measure of workers who are unemployed for an extended period of time, increased by about half a million since the beginning of the year at a typical pre-pandemic level of 1.8 million people.
Meanwhile, the monthly jobs report showed a slowdown in job creation in March, a month when the economy added only 236,000 new jobs.
Small business in particular they cut hiring plans. According to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, the share of companies planning to increase headcount has dropped from about 1 in 4 a year ago to 1 in 6 today.
Source: La Opinion
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