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.
The January loss is only slightly higher than 1/12 the total loss for 2025. Steady as she goes, though against a year that BLS shows (so far) as pretty weak and that Challenger describes as quite weak. Take out DOGE losses from the 2025 tally and losses ran faster in January than the 2025 minthly average. Just one month’s data – not a trend by itself – and we already know from Challenger that is was a bad month.
Problem is, Challenger has been reporting bad months for the past few months. That looks like a trend.
Notice how the Mad King was talking up the economy on Sunday? Obviously, that’s to keep the focus off of the Epstein files, but maybe also because he has a preliminary read on the January jobs report.
Off topic – stocks and mid-term elections:
A good bit of financial advisory chitchat is based on market history, and market historians are grinding out stories about what a mid-trrm election means for stocks.
Turns out the average S&P gain for mid-term years since 1930 has been 4.5%, vs 9.5% in all other years:
https://www.capitalgroup.com/advisor/insights/articles/midterm-elections-markets-5-charts.html
That smaller rise often involves a big drop sometime during the year, with an average drop 18%:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-stock-market-does-this-every-4-years-it-signals-an-alarming-drop-in-the-s-p-500-in-2026-if-history-repeats-itself/ar-AA1VDrZQ
Mid-term losses tend to be recouped early the following year.
Anyhow, some context for watching what stocks do this year.
Kind of, sort of related to an off topic comment: https://www.reuters.com/business/usdas-reputation-suffers-after-massive-revisions-us-corn-acres-2026-02-10/
What version of the past will you embrace, mighty Ozymandias?
Shelley’s Ozymandias, or from “The Watchmen”?
Cool, either way.
Then again, there’s Shiller’s CAPE ratio: https://www.gurufocus.com/economic_indicators/56/sp-500-shiller-cape-ratio, which supports the idea that a big drop is due, in whatever sense “due” can be applied to a market at least partially driven by animal spirits.
Remember that tech-stock ide a fee days ago? The idea was that AI had shown itself capable of putting a big dent in software revenues. Matt Stoller offers an explanation based on the structure of the software industry, particularly the segment he calls “software of record” for businesses:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-2-trillion
Getting software so entangled in a business that it costs a fortune to switch allows monopoly pricing. This is Matt Stoller, so of course the crux of the story is monopoly profits. And that’s why I think Stoller is onto something.
Try to follow the logic of this:
Peter Navarro “The jobs report comes out tomorrow. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like … Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals out of the job market.”
Wait, I thought they were deporting people to create more jobs for native Americans? There should be a boom in hiring but there isn’t.
I’m guessing that they know that the jobs report on Wednesday is going to be brutal — and they are trying to soften the public relations blow they know is coming.
Trump is setting the bar quite high. Would you take this job?
Trump: U.S. CAN GROW AT 15% IF WARSH DOES THE JOB HE’S CAPABLE OF — MAYBE MORE.
Remember that Trump appointed Powell and loved him until he hated him.