Slashdot Mirror
The US Just Had the Most Q1 Layoffs in a Decade (axios.com)
The U.S. saw its highest level of layoffs in a first quarter since 2009, data from staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released this week showed. From a report: Employers cut 190,410 jobs in the first 3 months of the year -- 10.3% higher than the number of layoffs announced in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 35.6% higher than job cuts announced in the same quarter of 2018. It's the highest number of job cuts in a quarter since 2015. The financial industry saw the third highest number of layoffs and the year-to-date total was 239% higher than it was in 2018.
From an analysis perspective, you can, in fact, only look at jobs lost. The original article is comparing apples to apples - job cuts in 2018Q1 vs job cuts in other recent quarters. It's not making a comment on the total job market or even attempting to. It's simply an analysis of job cuts only.
You have to compare statistics over the same period.
The article is about the first quarter 2019: that is, January through March. The job statistics for the first quarter are poor, mainly due to an absolutely terrible jobs report in February: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit... First quarter 2019 is significantly down in employment compared to the 2018 average.
The guy saying "fake news *rolls eyes*", however did the old switcheroo: he is just talking about March. March did bounce back... although it would be hard to not bounce back after such a low report for February, and it's still not even as high even as the average for 2018.