More Than 1 Million American Job Cuts This Year Alone... Is Your Investing Portfolio Prepared?

The jobs aren't coming back any time soon...

Last month, U.S. employers announced more than 150,000 job cuts – nearly triple September's totals and the highest October tally in more than 20 years.

Tech firms led the job cuts for the private sector, with substantial cuts also in retail, services, and warehouses, according to job-placement firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas.

Challenger highlighted two core motives behind the layoffs... aggressive cost cutting and the rise of artificial intelligence ("AI"). In addition, hiring has slowed to the lowest point in 14 years.

These cuts bring the annual total of layoffs to nearly 1.1 million Americans.

As Challenger noted in its report, these massive job losses right before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays feel particularly cruel.

They also might be just the beginning...

As we mentioned last week, Amazon led the job-loss charge among tech companies the last time we saw big layoffs in 2022.

So with Amazon's latest job-cut announcement for a "first round" of 14,000 folks laid off, and with rumors of a second round in early 2026... we expect more corporate titans to follow in the next few months.

1,000 Here, 10,000 There – Soon We're Talking Real Numbers

For example, software giant Oracle (ORCL) laid off thousands of employees earlier this year... and may have at least another 10,000 still to go. That's despite the massive triple-digit gain in its stock over the past six months.

Salesforce (CRM) has cut around 4,000 jobs. That represents almost halving its customer support roles... It hasn't yet started cutting white-collar office jobs.

And YouTube, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL), just announced voluntary buyouts for its U.S. staff. Panicked "Googlers" are taking to social media, asking if a major reorganization is in store.

Of course, tech companies are just the start. The job cuts are coming across every sector...

Last week, shipper United Parcel Service (UPS) announced it had eliminated 48,000 jobs this year – or roughly 10% of its workforce.

Insurance company Geico, owned by Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), has cut 30,000 jobs.

Retail store operator Target (TGT) is laying off 8% of its corporate workforce, for about 1,800 jobs.

And Walmart (WMT), the nation's largest employer, has warned that AI is set to "change literally every job" and that its workers would have to adapt. It says that it isn't currently looking at firing folks... but it also has no plans to add positions for at least three years.

Expect announced job cuts to increase sharply in the months ahead... especially as we move into the New Year.

Could AI Wipe Out Half of Entry-Level Office Jobs?

My colleague Nick Koziol noted two days ago that white-collar workers are at a particularly high risk of unemployment thanks to AI:

In an interview with Axios earlier this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Specifically, he highlighted the risk to finance, law, and consulting jobs.

That could be a huge factor behind the fact that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has hit the highest level in more than four years at 9.3%. Put simply, companies are instead filling those roles with AI.

Amodei also suggested that this could cause the unemployment rate to spike to between 10% and 20% within the next five years.

That would represent millions of Americans out of work, with few companies hiring.

After all, most companies are still in the very early stages of adopting AI technologies...

What could possibly go wrong?

Expect More Volatility as the Broader Economy Stays Confusing

The U.S. economy is still growing... largely thanks to AI-driven investment in data centers, power plants, and chip purchases.

But the details are more mixed under the surface...

For example, factories have been in contraction mode for most of the year. ISM's Manufacturing PMI fell to 48.7 in October, the eighth straight month in contraction territory. New orders and employment remained weak. As Reuters reported, a major cause has been tariff chaos...

"Tariffs have been roiling the sector for much of this year," said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander U.S. Capital Markets. "The comments from individual respondents suggest that firms are exhausted by all of the back and forth on tariffs since the beginning of April and are suffering mightily as their customers have pulled back significantly."

On the flip side, services are still expanding. S&P Global's U.S. Services PMI rose to 55.2 in October. That's the second‑fastest pace this year... and it helps explain why consumer spending hasn't yet fallen off a cliff. Services‑led resilience has defined much of 2024 and 2025.

All told, consumers seem to be feeling uneasy right now... but perhaps not yet broken. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 94.6 in October. That's the lowest reading in the past six months.

Gas prices are down, mortgage rates have pulled back modestly since the Federal Reserve cut rates twice this fall, and inflation is trending at about 3% annually...

AI Is Not the Boogeyman... But You Must Have a Plan

Given the massive capital expenditures on AI, we are not predicting a market crash. My colleague Corey McLaughlin detailed the AI spending from the first three Mag Seven companies to report earnings last week:

Alphabet now expects 2025 capex between $91 billion and $93 billion, up from its previous outlook of $75 billion to $85 billion. The company said it's "investing to meet customer demand" with its Gemini AI service topping 650 million monthly average users.

Microsoft's capex came in at $34.9 billion in the company's fiscal first quarter, above the $30 billion level that Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood forecast in July. And on the company's earnings call, Hood said that capex growth would accelerate in 2026 from 2025, after previously saying capex growth would slow. (Microsoft's capex jumped 45% in the 2025 fiscal year.)

As for Meta, the company said that capex growth "will be notably larger in 2026 than 2025." And in 2025, it's already spending more than it thought. Meta now forecasts capex in a range of $70 billion to $72 billion, higher than its previous outlook of $66 billion to $72 billion.

Today, Alphabet and Microsoft spend 10 times as much on capex as they did a decade ago... and Meta spends 20 times as much.

So we expect it's far more likely that we see a "melt up" in the market... when asset prices rise far faster than almost anyone else expects... before the eventual "melt down."

To succeed as an investor in that kind of environment, you cannot be afraid of AI or avoid these AI-focused companies... even as they might hasten the demise of the American white-collar worker.

Stansberry Research analyst and MarketWise CEO Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig admits that as AI gets to human-level intelligence, it won't be limited to entry-level jobs. But he looks to history for the long-term perspective. As he puts it...

Take a deep breath.

First, remember that every major new technology has raised fears that efficiency gains would cause mass unemployment.

In 1900, 40% of the U.S. population worked in agriculture as farmers. With technological advancements over the years, that number has dropped to less than 2%.

This has been an undeniably good thing for humanity. We are more productive. Over generations, the farmers moved into other, higher-productivity jobs. Lives were disrupted, but on a macro scale, it was a net positive.

We're fairly certain that will once again ring true. But it will likely be a hard transition for a lot of hard-working but unlucky Americans.

There is already a chasm in America between the "haves," folks who have saved, invested in the market, and seen their capital grow... and the "have-nots," who are living paycheck to paycheck without saving for a future rainy day.

Expect that rift to grow wider.

The most important thing you can do for yourself today is simple: Pay off debt. Save rather than spend. And invest in strong businesses and assets that can survive a crisis.

We like Doc's theory of a potential "Mar-a-Lago Accord"... essentially, he's predicting an intentional devaluation of the dollar, a revaluation for gold, and a massive "America First" infrastructure investment plan in manufacturing, technology, and energy.

We're already seeing many of the specific predictions that Doc has made come true...

• The dollar is already down roughly 10% from its January peak. And of course, the last historical Accord sent the dollar down nearly 40% in total.
• The Federal Reserve published an overview of what official gold-reserve revaluations across the world have looked like in August.
• And President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive stance in pushing for investment in America... from data centers to new nuclear plants. 

Doc warns that Americans who don't prepare could watch their retirement savings lose 40% in real value. But those who do prepare could not only preserve their wealth... but also see significant gains over the long term. Watch Doc's full Mar-a-Lago Accord documentary here.