The survey was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on 722 U.S. executives in early August. According to the survey, 50 percent of American firms are anticipating job cuts, while 52 percent are also expecting to institute hiring freezes. Another 44 percent are already rescinding job offers.
Bhushan Sethi, co-head of PwC's global people and organization group, noted that these are the current expectations of U.S. executives for the next six months to a year, and therefore are subject to change.
"They're focusing on what they can control," said Sethi. "They're dealing with geopolitics, supply chain issues, inflation, war in Ukraine, all these factors for which they have to determine what their strategies are."
For the week that ended on Aug. 13, about 250,000 people filed initial unemployment benefits claims, an increase from spring levels. (Related: Initial unemployment claims remain high as recession fears affect labor market.)
Some of America's largest companies have already begun the layoffs
While analysts note that mass layoffs are still on the horizon, some of the U.S.'s largest names in the corporate world have already started firing workers. These companies vary in what sector of the American economy they operate in.
Layoffs affecting just one or two industries would only indicate downturns in those sectors of the economy. The fact that the companies announcing layoffs are from every corner of the American economy has very dire indications.
Chicago-based e-commerce marketplace Groupon announced that it was firing more than 500 of its workers, representing around 15 percent of its 3,400 employees. The reduction primarily impacted workers in merchant development, sales, recruiting, engineering and product and marketing.
Telecommunications company Ultratec also announced that it will be laying off more than 600 workers.
Rivian, an electric truck manufacturing corporation, will be laying off approximately 840 workers.
Multinational convenience store chain 7-Eleven announced it will be laying off 880 employees from its corporate offices as it undergoes restructuring.
Video hosting platform Vimeo announced that its approximately 1,200-strong workforce will be reduced by six percent.
Real estate brokerage Redfin, which has around 6,500 employees, is reducing its workforce by eight percent, or around 500 people. Compass, Inc., another real estate broker, is reducing its workforce of around 4,800 people by 10 percent, or nearly 500 people as well.
RE/MAX, another real estate company, had around 640 employees in 2021. Similar to Redfin and Compass, the company announced a massive layoff of 17 percent of its workforce. All three real estate companies noted that the slowdown in new housing purchases is preventing them from expanding their workforces or even retaining many of their existing staff.
Robinhood, a financial services company known for facilitating the GameStop short squeeze in early 2021, is laying off nearly a quarter of its workforce of nearly 4,000 people.
Ford Motor Company, which has around 91,000 employees in the U.S. alone, representing a little under half of its total workforce, announced that it will be cutting around 8,000 jobs in the coming weeks. This includes roughly 3,000 white-collar and contract employees. The company will start notifying salaried and agency workers in the coming weeks whether or not they get to keep their jobs.
Amazon, America's second-largest employer after Walmart, also announced that it was reducing the size of its workforce by approximately 100,000 employees in just one quarter, claiming recession fears, lingering supply chain issues and inflation.
Other companies that have signaled potential mass layoffs in the coming months include Best Buy, HBO Max, Peloton, Shopify, Walmart and Wayfair.
Learn more about the unraveling of the American economy at Collapse.news.
Watch this video that talks about how the mass layoffs of 2008 and 2009 are happening again as companies try to avoid getting caught with bloated payrolls.
This video is from The Prisoner channel on Brighteon.com.
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