Announced, filed, realized
The same months three ways. Each row has its own scale: the bars are not comparable in height, only in shape and timing. Hover or tap a month to read all of them.
Announced (Challenger). Cuts a US-based employer announces publicly, counted when announced, nationwide, any size. They can be plans spread over years, can be global head counts trimmed to the US share, and can be cut back later.
Filed (WARN notices). The federal WARN Act requires employers with 100 or more full-time workers to give 60 days' written notice of a plant closing that costs 50 or more jobs at one site, or a mass layoff of 50 or more at one site that is at least a third of its staff (or 500 or more regardless); some states set lower thresholds. Notices go to the state, which publishes them in its own format. The bars count workers by the date the notice was filed; the line counts the same notices by the layoff date they give. Only the states below with complete, current data are included (), so this is a fixed panel, not a national total. Smaller and spread-out cuts never trigger a notice.
Realized (JOLTS). The Bureau of Labor Statistics' survey estimate of all involuntary separations (layoffs and discharges, including firings for cause) at every US employer, seasonally adjusted. It runs one to two months behind and is revised; the latest month is preliminary.
Lags. An announcement can come months before notices are filed or people leave; a notice comes at least 60 days before the layoff; JOLTS records the separation when it happens. A spike in one row need not show up in the next row in the same month.
WARN coverage by state
Why employers said they were cutting
Companies that said it out loud
Announcements where the company itself tied the cuts to AI, in a filing, a press release, a memo or an interview. Their figures are global head counts; Challenger counts only the US share, and only when it is announced.
What this does and doesn't count
Announcements, not layoffs. Challenger tallies plans as they are announced. Some are spread over years, some are ranges (it records the stated figure), some are later scaled back, and some cuts are never announced at all. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts realized layoffs and discharges: between 1.50 and 1.90 million a month in JOLTS from January 2023 to August 2026, seasonally adjusted. These figures are a small, loud slice of that.
The reason is what the employer said. A cut lands under AI only when the announcement names it. A company that says "restructuring" while it spends on AI is filed under restructuring; one that names AI to please investors is filed under AI. Challenger has said both happen. Since 2025 it also keeps "Technological Update (possibly AI)" for cuts blamed on new technology where AI is alluded to but not named: 20,219 in 2025.
Gaps. Before 2025 the reports were web posts without full tables, and some months' posts give no AI figure. Where two stated year-to-date totals pin down a single missing month, the chart shows it as implied (hatched). August and September 2023 together account for 30 AI cuts that the releases never split, so those bars carry a question mark. From December 2024 on, every figure comes from the reasons table in that month's PDF.
Checks. Every stated year-to-date total matches the sum of the monthly totals as first reported, every PDF reasons table adds up to its total, and no later report revised an earlier month's total. One stated figure doesn't reconcile: the February 2026 report says 91,753 AI-cited cuts since 2023, but its own full-year and year-to-date figures give 84,129. The March report's 99,470 is consistent again.
Sources
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., The Challenger Report (monthly job cut announcement report), Chicago, January 2023 to September 2026 editions, released February 2023 to October 2026. Each month's release page and, from December 2024, its PDF with tables:
Company announcements:
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, layoffs and discharges, seasonally adjusted levels: total nonfarm (series JTS000000000000000LDL) and information (JTS510000000000000LDL), January 2023 onward, read from the BLS public API (api.bls.gov) on , bls.gov/jlt.
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 2101–2102, via Cornell Legal Information Institute, law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/2101.