Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in Jan. 2026, the highest January tally since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against uncertainty about the economy.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” said Andy Challenger, whose global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas publishes the report on job cuts and hiring plans every month.

Employer plans to hire were also at the lowest since 2009, the tail end of the Great Recession, when the jobless rate hovered near double digits, Challenger said. The 5,306 hiring plans announced in Jan. 2026 were half the 10,496 announced in December, while job cuts were more than double.

The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits for the first time also spiked in the most recent week, the Labor Department said on Feb. 5. Many economists and other analysts consider "initial claims" to be the best real-time read on the job market since it is released so frequently, but that can also make it jumpy.

"Initial claims have returned to their trend, after a few weeks of unusually low numbers due to low seasonal hiring in Q4, and hence unusually low layoffs in January," said economists at Pantheon Macro in a note published just after the report was released.

But, they added, "we continue to think that the unemployment rate will continue to rise gradually over the first half of this year."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Most job cuts since 2009 may be sign of economy faltering