Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on new data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that tracks workplace hiring and firing in the United States. “Employers,” the newspaper wrote, “announced more than 153,000 job cuts last month, a 183 percent increase from the month before, marking the worst October for layoffs since 2003.” For 2025 as a whole, U.S. employers have so far announced 1.1 million layoffs—a level of job cuts comparable to those of 2008 and 2009 during the Great Recession.