NJ Job Cuts Quintuple As National Layoffs Mirror The Great Recession

Layoffs surged in New Jersey in January, rising more than five times the number of job cuts in January 2025 and mirroring a national trend experts say has not been seen since the Great Recession.

Employers notified New Jersey of 1,980 job cuts announced in January, a 544 percent increase over the 307 cuts in January 2025, according to the state's WARN notice listings.

That number is nearly triple the number of layoffs in December, when 677 jobs cuts were announced.

Nationally, there were 108,435 job cuts announced in January, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a firm that specializes in helping people find new employment when they have been laid off.

That number is an increase of 118 percent from the 49,795 cuts in January 2025 and is the highest since January 2009, when 241,749 job cuts were announced, the firm said.

In January 2009, there were 2,216 layoffs announced in New Jersey as the country struggled with the fallout from the banking and real estate crisis of 2008.

The surge in cuts is an indication "employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026," according to Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Layoffs are often high in the first quarter, but the number for January was higher than is typical, he said.

The largest cuts nationally in 2026 have been by UPS and Amazon, the Challenger report said, with UPS laying off 30,000, and Amazon cutting 16,000 positions. In New Jersey, those cuts accounted for 871 of the 1,980 cuts in January, all from Amazon. Read more: Huge Amazon, Insurance Company Layoffs Sends NJ Unemployment Skyrocketing

Challenger, Gray and Christmas, which has been tracking job data since 2009, said the biggest driver of the layoffs has been the ending of contracts — primarily the agreement between Amazon and UPS.

Technology was the second-largest reason, with 22,291 national cuts, but it's unclear yet how much of that is due to the impact of artificial intelligence.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy "has said AI will cost jobs in the coming years, but this cut appears to be due more to overhiring and reducing layers than to the new technology," Andy Challenger said. Amazon was closing its Amazon Fresh operations in New Jersey.

The Challenger report said employers nationally announced plans to add 5,306 jobs in January, the lowest number since 2009, which makes it difficult for those who have been laid off to find new work.

Specifics for New Jersey hiring in January won't be available until later this month, but the state's unemployment rate was 5.4 percent in November and December, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That rate is the highest since the pandemic, but not as high as January 2009, when New Jersey was at 7.3 percent.

So far in February, New Jersey employers have announced 294 cuts, with Walmart laying off 100, Valley National Bank cutting 96 positions and GMRI Inc. — the parent company of the restaurant chain Bahama Breeze — eliminating 98 jobs.

There were 16,758 layoffs in the state in 2025, with nearly a third of those cuts — 5,429 — announced in the final quarter of the year, 912 in December.

All of those numbers increase concerns about a recession. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Forbes that gaps in federal labor data due to the government shutdown in October made it difficult to accurately assess the labor market conditions.

A survey in late 2025 of members of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association found most were taking a wait-and-see approach to 2026 when it comes to employment levels.

"People are anticipating holding (job) levels in 2026," said Michele Siekerka, CEO of the association. The NJBIA's survey was conducted by Signet Research and gathered 569 valid responses primarily from small businesses, with 65 percent employing 24 people or fewer.

Read more: NJ Job Losses Reach 16K For 2025; What Does 2026 Hold?