In the Challenger, Gray and Christmas report for January is an interesting table, reporting the job losses attributed to each factor.
Notice that in January, AI only accounts for 7% of the 108,435 announced layoffs. For all of 2025, the share is only 4.5%. Part of the “technological update” category could be AI-related, so adding in 20,219 (to bias the case for AI-related loss) for 2025 leads to 6.2%.
For comparison, DOGE actions accounted for 24.4% (293,753) of total layoffs in 2025.
That being said, it could be (likely is) the case that we are at the very beginning of the AI affecting labor markets. So look for disruption to historical trends.
