There was good news and bad news from Wednesday’s monthly update on job cut announcements across the world’s largest economy.

I’ll start with the bad news. Because if you assume and expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed.

So far in 2025, Challenger, Gray & Christmas count 744,308 job cut announcements in America. That’s a lot of planned layoffs. In fact, it’s the largest YTD total since 2020, when the global economy briefly shut down in the face of a plague.

The simple figure above’s a reminder of the damage done by the world’s richest man and his pretensions to government cost-cutting.

Given the read-through for household balance sheets (not to mention household stress) from 745,000 job cut announcements, I think it’s a bit insensitive to carry on about ostensible silver linings. We’re talking about layoff notices targeting a quarter of a million people over a very compressed timeframe.

That said, it’s at least nice to see the so-called “DOGE effect” fade. Indeed, as illustrated both above and in the figure below, it’s dissipated almost entirely. Or at least on this series, and at the aggregate level.

When plotted on a YoY basis, the same series — i.e., the Challenger headline — shows a decline for June. The 47,999 job cut announcements last month marked a slight drop from 48,786 this time last year. June’s total was also the fewest yet for a “Trump 2.0” month.

Don’t get too comfortable, though: If Wednesday’s private-sector hiring report’s any indication, the labor market’s teetering. While editorializing around the first negative ADP print in over two years, Nela Richardson said layoffs are still “rare,” but cautioned that employers are exhibiting “a hesitancy to hire.” It probably won’t take much of a slowdown for that hiring “hesitancy” to morph into a firing tendency.

On the bright side for anyone who’s just been laid off (or who might be soon), this week’s JOLTS release suggested there are ample openings at hotels and restaurants, commensurate with the deportation of a cheap labor.