Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. Alphabet Inc. is expected to release earnings figures on February 2.
Marlena Sloss | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Companies announced nearly 90,000 layoffs in March, a sharp step up from the previous month and a giant acceleration from a year ago, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday.
Planned layoffs totaled 89,703 for the period, an increase of 15% from February. Year to date, job cuts have soared to 270,416, an increase of 396% from the same period a year ago.
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The damage was especially bad in tech, which has announced 102,391 cuts so far in 2023. That’s a staggering increase of 38,487% from a year ago and good for 38% of all staff reductions. Tech already has cut 5% more than for all of 2022, according to the report, and is on pace to eclipse 2001, the worst year ever amid the dot-com bust.
“We know companies are approaching 2023 with caution, though the economy is still creating jobs,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “With rate hikes continuing and companies’ reigning in costs, the large-scale layoffs we are seeing will likely continue.”
In other jobs news Thursday, weekly jobless claims totaled 228,000 for the week ended April 1, above the 200,000 Dow Jones estimate, the Labor Department reported. Continuing claims nudged higher to 1.823 million, the highest since December 2021.
Benchmark revisions from the department indicate that claims have been above 200,000 for virtually the entire period going back to late October 2022.
Financial companies have announced the second-highest rate of job cuts this year, with the 30,635 layoffs representing a 419% increase from the first quarter in 2022. Health care and retail are the next highest.
At the same time, planned hiring waned in March, totaling just 9,044, or the worst for the month since 2015. On a year-to-date basis, planned additions are at the…
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