What to know : U.S. planned layoffs more than tripled in January to their highest level since 2009, signaling a sharp cooling in the jobs market despite still-strong official payroll data. Private indicators, including Challenger layoff figures and a blockchain-based real-time inflation gauge, suggest weakening growth and disinflation that could push the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Expectations for Fed policy are deeply divided. Some economists foresee aggressive easing that could support risk assets such as bitcoin, which has fallen nearly 50% from its record high.
The U.S. jobs market is cooling fast, a timely blow that could force the Federal Reserve to loosen its purse strings and potentially put a floor under the price of bitcoin .
Planned layoffs, the job cuts that companies have announced but not yet executed, surged by 205% to 108,435 in January, according to data tracked by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's the highest reading since January 2009, months after Lehman Brothers collapsed and pushed the global economy into recession.
Year-on-year, the announced cuts rose 118%, indicating a sharp weakening in the labor market in the first year of Donald Trump's second stint as president. The technology industry announced 22,291 reductions, with Amazon (AMZN) accounting for most, while United Parcel Service (UPS) announced 31,243 planned cuts.
Andy Challenger, workplace expert at Challenger, Grey & Christmas, called it a high figure for January, in any case a seasonally weak month for hiring.
"It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026," Challenger said.
This data clashes with the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly payrolls report, which still paints a resilient labor market picture.
Private reports are increasingly becoming early warning flags, signaling cracks forming before the official figures. Earlier this month, the blockchain-based Truflation showed a precipitous drop in real-time inflation, to under 1%, even as the official CPI lingers well above the Fed's 2% target.
Together, these unofficial indicators suggest the Fed may soon need to relax policy by lowering borrowing costs to support the economy. The potential easing could bode well for assets like bitcoin, which is now down nearly 50% from its record high of over $126,000.
The Fed this month left the benchmark borrowing rate unchanged in the 3.5%-3.75% range, while flagging concerns about inflation. Analysts' projections on what it will do next are all over the place.
JPMorgan expects the Fed to keep rates unchanged throughout this year and then increase sometime in 2027, while other banks expect at least two 25-basis-point rate cuts this year.
An economist who correctly predicted Japan's fiscal issues expects Trump's nominee for Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, to cut rates by 100 basis points before the mid-term elections in November.
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