Halloween Scares: 2025 Layoffs Mount Up.

Happy All Hallow’s Eve, Job Board Doctor friends!

As many of us are preparing to head out to take the kiddos trick-or-treating or attend one of our favorite Halloween parties, haunted houses, and scary movie marathons, the job market continues to provide a scary reality as 2025 layoffs mount up.

Four bellwethers, Amazon, UPS, Target, and General Motors, each trimmed headcount for different reasons. Reasons cited include the anticipation of AI, a focus on higher-margin business, efficiency drives, and EV and tariff realities.

Together, the cuts say as much about corporate strategy as they do about macro crosswinds: slower goods demand, massive AI investment plans, investors hungry for more margin, and economic uncertainty created by government instability.

This week, let’s take a look at the reasoning behind the cuts in very four different companies in four different industries.

Amazon

Yesterday, Amazon announced Q3 earnings, along with most of the Magnificent Seven also reporting this week. The company beat both guidance and expectations:

• Earnings per share: $1.95 vs. $1.57 estimated
• Revenue: $180.17 billion vs. $177.8 billion estimated

Amazon’s latest cull centers on corporate roles in an AI-first reorganization. On Wednesday, roughly 14,000 white-collar roles were cut with the expectation of cuts reaching ~30,000 white-collar employees with reports that total corporate reductions could extend far higher as divisions from AWS to Prime Video streamline. The company frames the cuts as “speeding innovation and pruning duplication,” not weakening core businesses. California WARN notices show hundreds of impacted roles, underscoring the breadth across hubs.

On the earnings call, Amazon raised its CapEx forecast for 2025 to $125 billion (up $7 billion from budget) and noted that number will likely be even larger in 2026.

Where is that money going? The largest chunk will likely fund AI infrastructure investment, as the Mag 7 players require growing amounts of compute power for AI processing.

Google and Meta also reported this week, with expected increases in CapEx spending for AI development and AI infrastructure projects. On the same day as its layoff announcement, Amazon opened an $11 billion data center right here in rural Indiana.

UPS

UPS is in full “shrink to strengthen” mode. Year-to-date, the carrier has cut about 48,000 jobs, including roughly 34,000 operational roles and 14,000 management positions, alongside closures of daily operations at 93 buildings. Management ties the reductions to a turnaround plan — a shift away from Amazon low margin volume and toward cost savings targeted in the billions this year. The goal: a leaner network with higher margin productivity and greater automation.

Where Amazon’s cuts are hitting white-collar workers, UPS’s focus impacts blue-collar workers – factory staff, delivery drivers, and their middle management. However, blue-collar workers won’t escape future impacts as automation accelerates. We may soon see U.S. logistics firms testing “dark factories” similar to those already operating in China.

Target

Target is trimming about 1,800 corporate positions, split between roughly 1,000 layoffs and 800 unfilled roles, amounting to about 8% of its global corporate staff. Leadership cites simplification and faster decision-making — not store or supply-chain cuts.

Local reporting describes the process as impersonal and clumsy, echoing Paycom’s layoffs — complete with video-call technical issues and HQ staff told to work from home “next week” while waiting for news of their fate.

This pandemic-born practice of mass online communication has become an ongoing, efficiency-driven style of corporate reduction. Not good.

General Motors

GM’s recalibration reflects slower near-term EV adoption and the expiration of the federal $7,500 EV tax credit in September. The company announced roughly 1,750 layoffs plus thousands of temporary reductions, shift cuts at Factory Zero, and a planned temporary shutdown of two Ultium Cells battery plants in early 2026, with production expected to resume mid-year.

Coming from a UAW-strong automotive family, I can attest that layoffs are so routine in the auto industry I’ve lost my ability to be surprised. Unfortunately, this round appears to stem from bad policy costing jobs rather than poor corporate decision-making.

Final Thoughts

The outcome, though, is the same: great people with great talent heading into the holiday season without certainty and, in some cases, without a next paycheck.

Read the footnotes; the details matter more than the headlines.

If you run a recruitment site, note where the work is moving: fewer middle seats, more automation, faster cycle times. Buckle down and recalibrate your product roadmap and candidate engagement strategy accordingly.

We’ll get through this but the ride is going to be bumpy.

Until Next Time,

Julie “The Doc” Sowash

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