Announced job cuts slowed sharply in June from the prior month, consistent with the typical seasonality, but good news all the same.

Specifically, US employers tipped 45,849 layoffs last month, according to Wednesday’s update from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The report was released a day early as the macro schedule shifted to make room for Friday’s holiday.

June’s tally was less than half of May’s total, counted as the fewest of 2026 so far and marked a decline from the same period a year ago.

The figure gives you the context. It’s also a reminder of how much damage Elon Musk managed to do during his three months as shadow president.

The DOGE shock distorts the YTD comp. Although announced job cuts fell markedly in the January-June period compared to 2025, the 443,604 cuts announced so far this year count as the most for any first half since 2020.

The rest of the release was mostly unremarkable. Or maybe “as-expected” is the better term given that it’d be strange to describe the AI epoch’s impact on the labor market as quotidian.

Tech led all sectors in job cuts last month. For the year, 76,214 layoffs — around a third of overall, economy-wide cuts — in the space amount to an 83% YoY increase.

“Tech remains the epicenter,” Andy Challenger said. “AI is the dominant force [and] the sector is being reshaped in real time.”

AI, you’ll recall, became the most-cited reason for job cuts in May. It retained the top spot in June, when “the robots” (so to speak) were blamed for more than 14,000 cuts.

As the figure shows, AI’s responsible for nearly 102,000 cuts so far in 2026, or almost a quarter of all YTD layoffs.

Challenger started asking about AI in 2023. The total number of cuts blamed on AI since then is 173,568.

So, around 60% of AI-related cuts since 2023 have occurred in the last six months alone. That gives you a sense of how this is escalating.