November was a chilly month for jobs, relatively speaking, of course. “Only” 263,000 new jobs were created by employers. That was the slowest pace of adding payroll costs in almost two years. (Yes, it is best to put quotes around the word only in that last sentence because a month with 263,000 new jobs would have been considered a red-hot number in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Companies slowed their appetite to add workers while also announcing thousands more planned layoffs in November, led by more than 52,000 announced layoffs by tech firms, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That’s a 20-year high as the chill set-in for the technology sector.
December and January tend to be popular months to announce job cuts. Companies are rushing to make an annual budget or reshape one as it begins.
