Challenger Reports July Job Cuts Down -93% Year-Over-Year in July 2021

According to the latest Job Cut Report released from Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CG&C), Inc, a global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm, U.S. based companies announced 18,942 job cuts in July, down -93% from the 262,649 cuts announced in July 2020. Last month’s total is the lowest since in June 2000, when 17,241 job cuts were announced. July’s total is -7.5% lower than June, when 20,476 cuts were recorded. So far this year, employers have announced plans to cut 231,603 jobs from their payrolls, down -87.5% from the 1,847,696 jobs eliminated through July of 2020. It is the lowest January-July total on record. The second lowest occurred in 1997, when 233,915 cuts were tracked.

In remarks prepared for the release of the July report, Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President of CG&C said, “Right now, things appear to be stalling. There are over 9.2 million job openings and 9.5 million unemployed. The positions and workers are not connecting.” Challenger noted that COVID is still contributing to job cuts, though at a far slower pace. Last month, 153 cuts were attributed to COVID-19 for a total of 7,950 this year. Last month’s total is -97% lower than the 4,620 cuts announced for this reason in January. So far this year, 1,154 cuts have been attributed to a downturn in demand for products directly related to COVID. “It remains to be seen what the Delta variant may do to job cuts, if anything. At this point, companies are trying to attract and retain talent, not let them go.”