Is the ‘no-hire, no-fire’ labor market narrative breaking as job cuts mount?

The job market in 2025 has been considered static. That’s both good: Layoffs have been steady, and the unemployment rate remains low by historical standards. And bad: It’s hard to find a job if you’re looking.

But a raft of job cut announcements this fall from big companies like Amazon, Verizon, and Target calls into question the state of what has been deemed a “no-hire, no-fire” labor market.

Economists are certainly watching the trend with a careful eye.

“All the signs point to we’re moving from ‘no-hire, no-fire’ labor market to ‘no-hire, start-to-fire’ labor market,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

The US is about to get its first official report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the country’s unemployment rate since August.

The jobs report will only cover data for September — thanks to the government shutdown — and will reflect the period before layoff announcements began mounting, accounting for the worst October for planned cuts since 2003, according to global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

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WARN notices, or the heads-up big companies are required to provide ahead of mass layoffs, also spiked in 21 states last month to reach 39,006, among the highest level in records dating back to 2006, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. (The number still trailed layoffs from the 2020 pandemic and Great Recession, as well as May of this year.)

Ahead of those announcements, layoffs and the unemployment rate had otherwise been considered relatively stable, though people were still struggling to find work as the economy added few new positions. Whether that’s set to shift in a significant way as companies plan workforce reductions — a reality in corporate America even when the economy is considered strong — is up for debate.

“If you ask businesses how they see the labor market today, they say ‘balanced.’ But as they describe that ‘balance’ in more detail, it doesn’t seem so,” Barkin said. “With the exception of skilled trades, labor feels quite available with plenty of quality applicants per opening.”

“Recent layoff announcements by sizable firms like Amazon, Verizon, and Target give additional cause for caution,” he added.

So far, available data from private sources suggests a labor market that’s “growing very slowly or flat,” supporting the no-hire, no-fire narrative, said Robert Shimer, professor in economics at the University of Chicago. He thinks the September jobs report likely will show more of the same. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg project a gain of about 50,000 positions.

“By the time we get the November report, it’s possible we’ll start seeing in the aggregate numbers an increase in firing and maybe a change in hiring as well,” Shimer said, but the kind of big job cut announcements that tend to get a lot of attention still typically only result in small movements in the layoff rate.

What may be of greater consequence is the economy’s lack of hiring: Shimer’s research has shown that “fluctuations in unemployment are mainly driven by periods where firms don’t hire very much, and unemployed workers stay unemployed for longer, rather than particularly being about spikes in layoffs,” he said.

At this point, though, it’s clear that the labor market is showing some signs of cracking, Long said.

“The question is really: How much firing is going on?” she added.

The government’s report showing the number of job openings and layoffs for October is set to be released Dec. 9, though the unemployment rate and full jobs report for that month will not be published, the Labor Department announced Wednesday.

Instead, establishment survey data from October will be released alongside the full November jobs report, scheduled for release Dec. 16.

Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at emma.ockerman@yahooinc.com.

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