Office workers are receiving a new message from the most prominent companies in the country: help not wanted.
This week, Amazon.com announced that it will slash 14,000 corporate roles, with plans to eventually lay off up to 10% of its white-collar personnel. Days after Target announced it will eliminate 1,800 corporate positions, United Parcel Service announced on Tuesday that it has trimmed its management personnel by around 14,000 positions during the previous 22 months.
White-collar employees from Rivian Automotive, Molson Coors, Booz Allen Hamilton, and General Motors were given pink slips earlier in October, or they were informed that they would be arriving shortly. Tens of thousands of recently laid-off white-collar professionals in America are entering a job market that is stagnant and doesn’t appear to have room for them.
Kelly Williamson received a concerning text from her company, Whole Foods Market on Amazon, around 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, telling her to check her email.
“Review as soon as possible and stay home from work today,” the note stated. Williamson’s position on the asset protection team was being removed. The 55-year-old from Austin, Texas, had his badge and laptop revoked. She was given 90 days to find another work with the organization. She stated that her personal stuff are being shipped to her.
A leaner, new normal for work in the United States is emerging. Large firms are retrenching, reducing white-collar jobs and leaving less chances for seasoned and new employees who had relied on well-paying office jobs to support their families and fund retirement. According to current official data, about two million people in the United States have been unemployed for at least 27 weeks.
The wave of white-collar layoffs is fueled in part by corporations’ adoption of artificial intelligence, which executives think can handle more of the job that well-paid white-collar staff have traditionally done. Investors have pushed the C-suite to be more efficient with fewer personnel. Political instability and rising prices are among the factors contributing to sluggish hiring.
Overall, these variables are reshaping what office work looks like in the United States, leaving managers with more people to monitor and less time to meet with them, while burdening employees who are lucky enough to have employment with heavier workloads.
Both management and employees feel uneasy as a result of the series of restructurings. Additionally, it is reducing the possibilities available to job seekers. This year, fewer Americans than in previous years—roughly 20% of those surveyed by WSJ-NORC—said they were very or extremely sure that they could find a decent job if they wanted to.
Opportunities for front-line, blue-collar, or specialist labor are expanding in the meantime. Businesses report a lack of workers in trade, healthcare, hospitality, and construction, a halt to recruiting managers and consultants, layoffs in retail and finance, and the use of AI for accounting and fraud detection.
Chris Reed, 33, who worked in technology sales for more than ten years before getting laid off a year ago, said, “The system just feels like it’s messed up.”
After ten months of job searching, Reed, a resident of New Braunfels, Texas, just accepted a position selling Toyotas. Reed looks after his wife, a stay-at-home mother and student, as well as his three children, ages six, eight, and ten. Reed declared, “I’m qualified and have the experience in tech.” “I didn’t land any of those positions.”
He claimed to have applied to over a thousand jobs after being laid off. In order to pay for food, gas, utilities, and two vehicle payments, Reed claimed he sold stocks, bitcoin, and the Pokémon cards he had gathered with his kid in addition to emptying his 401(k). He said that because he was unable to pay his mortgage, his house was placed in foreclosure.
His acquaintance recommended the dealership position to him this summer. He frequently works on the floor from the store’s 8:30 a.m. opening to its 9 p.m. closing, and he commutes for at least two hours every day. He was weighing whether to drive in on Tuesday because it was his day off.
After only a few months of employment, he is experiencing the stress of a bad work-life balance. He rises up before his kids go for school and comes home after evening, often going days without seeing them. When he puts his children to bed in the evenings, his daughter won’t let him go.
He said, “She believes I won’t see her the following day.” It has had a significant effect on my home life.
Many American workers have been vying for the white-collar positions that are being eliminated. They paid for college degrees in order to be eligible for interviews, after which they were hired for comfortable positions like midlevel engineers and human resource managers.
With workers who climbed the corporate ladder waiting their turn for a video call announcing their last day, what was once a steady job now feels like a ticking time bomb.
Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia discovered that higher-paying jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree are more susceptible to AI than other ones.
Hiring has decreased despite economic growth, and experts predict less job creation in the fall. Companies are increasingly pickier in this setting, which puts pressure on both recent college graduates looking for their first jobs and seasoned white-collar professionals.
The number of 40-year-olds looking for job has increased over the past year, according to Mo Toueg, who owns a recruiting company. According to Toueg of GOBU Associates, “they’re telling me they can’t keep up with the technology that’s out there as much.” “Tech is surpassing their expertise.”
Candidates who have nearly similar work experience to the job description are being denied, according to job seekers. According to Melissa Marcus, managing director of an employment consultancy agency in Austin, Texas, companies may now recruit employees that precisely match their required characteristics.
According to her, the businesses that now have the funds to spend on head counts are asking for the moon and the stars.
Entry-level hiring is being squeezed by this dynamic. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the class of 2025 applied for more jobs than the class of 2024, but they received fewer offers.
Kobe Baker, 23, who started looking for work in January 2025, soon after graduating from Baylor University, stated, “I felt like I was putting a lot of work into getting myself into the job market, and the ladder had been pulled out from under me.” “No one was present to truly advise me on how to get better and do better on my next application. There was only radio silence.
After graduating, Baker, who is currently residing in Bloomfield, New Jersey, had wanted to get employment in New York City. Before finding a position in customer service in late September, he broadened his search. According to him, a lot of young people aspire to be independent yet struggle to get employment.
The CEO of the growth advisory consulting business SBI, Mike Hoffman, stated that although productivity has increased, he has reduced his software-development workforce by 80% in the last six months. He stated, “We have someone overseeing groups of agents that are coding.” “Our AI writes Python on its own.”
According to Hoffman, investors are putting pressure on businesses to reduce headcount by as much as 30%. According to him, executives should consider if they can do this and whether it is the proper thing to do.
Chegg, an online learning startup, announced on Monday that it will eliminate 388 jobs worldwide, or around 45% of its personnel, as it switches to an AI model that responds to students’ inquiries automatically.
