With nearly 15k laid off, retail saw the largest job cuts in April

Meanwhile the tech sector saw its lowest number of jobs cut since October

While the tech industry has been hit especially hard lately, with over 100,000 tech workers being laid off in the first quarter of this year, it was actually another sector that took the brunt of it in April.

Retail led all industries last month with 14,689 job cuts, according to a new report from global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That number was up 270% from the 3,970 cuts in the retail space announced in March.

The tech sector, meanwhile, came in second place, with 11,553 job cuts, the lowest number since October 2022, when 9,587 jobs were cut. Still, tech overall still leads in cuts year-to-date with 113,944, up 24,724% from just 459 cuts in the same period in 2022, while retail has seen 36,115 jobs cut so far. The third largest number of cuts came from consumer products manufacturers, which laid off 9,146 works, bringing it total for the year to 19,116, a 391% increase from same period in 2022. Meanwhile, the health sector, which includes hospitals and medical products manufacturers, cut 6,184 jobs, for a total of 29,134 for the year. 

Overall, there were 66,995 job cuts announced in April, a 176% increase year-to-uear, making it the fourth consecutive month this year where job cuts were higher than the corresponding month in 2022. With the exclusion of 2020, this is the highest total job cuts for the first four months of a year since 2009, when 711,100 cuts were announced.

There is some good news: the number of job cuts went down down 25% from the 89,703 cuts announced in March. 

Retail cuts 

Among those retailers that have announced job cuts this year include the Gap, which will lay off 1,800 corporate employees, as well as members of its "upper field workforce" and David's Bridal, which will lay off 9,236 employees nationwide.

Walmart, meanwhile, has cut hundreds of jobs at store and fulfillment centers in recent weeks, as well as hundreds at e-commerce fulfillment centers, and another 480 due to store closures in Portland, Oregon; Neiman Marcus cut 5% of staff; Wayfair cut 1,750 jobs, or about 10% of its workforce in January; and Amazon let go about 18,000 employees January, many of whom were focused on the company's brick-and-mortar retail business. 

(Image source: economictimes.com)