The trend: A surge of high-profile layoffs is sweeping through corporate America.

• Target is cutting 1,800 roles, about 8% of its corporate staff, in its largest layoff in a decade.
• Nestlé plans to eliminate 16,000 jobs, roughly 6% of its workforce, over the next two years under its “Fuel for Growth” turnaround plan.
• Starbucks is cutting 900 corporate positions, on top of 1,100 in February, and closing hundreds of locations.
• General Motors has let go of more than 200 salaried employees, mostly CAD engineers at its global tech campus near Detroit, as part of ongoing cost-cutting efforts.
• Rivian is laying off more than 600 employees, about 4.5% of its staff.
• Amazon is reportedly planning a round of layoffs that will shrink its roughly 10,000-person HR department by 15%, and affect other units as well, per Fortune.

The latest job cut announcements, following a wave of layoffs earlier this summer, deepen an already challenging labor landscape. Companies have announced more than 946,000 job cuts through September, the fifth-highest total for the first nine months of a year in the 36 years Challenger, Gray & Christmas has tracked layoffs, and the highest since 2020.

Why it matters: These cuts add to economic unease.

• US consumer sentiment fell to a five-month low in October, per the University of Michigan, as worries over inflation, household finances, and a cooling job market weighed on confidence.
• The government shutdown has further dampened the outlook ahead of the holiday season, as roughly 1.5 million federal employees—either on furlough or classified as “excepted”—are working without pay. Meanwhile, millions of low-income Americans will lose access to food aid on November 1, when at least 25 states plan to cut off benefits due to the government shutdown, per Politico.
• And the cost-of-living crisis seems unlikely to ease anytime soon as insurance premiums are poised to soar in the year ahead. Premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov will jump 30% on average next year, per The Washington Post, and the more than 154 million US consumers who receive coverage through an employer also face steep price hikes, per KFF.

Our take: While each round of layoffs tells a different story, they all point to a common concern: Consumers are tightening their belts, a worrying sign heading into the holidays. Yet caution among large firms can ripple through smaller ones, amplifying anxiety across the broader economy. As companies pull back, they risk deepening the very slowdown they’re trying to avoid.