More layoffs coming and less jobs available. But hey, DOW 50,000!

Late last week, we got a couple of indications that the US jobs market was in rough shape. The first sign came when we found out there was a huge increase in layoff plans by companies.

Layoff announcements ballooned in January, hitting the highest level for the month since 2009, according to a Thursday report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

That should come as no surprise, given tens of thousands of job-cut announcements in recent weeks from the likes of Amazon, UPS, and Pinterest, as companies claim the need to make room for investments in artificial intelligence, reorient business plans in uncertain times, reduce bureaucracy, or compensate for the rash of pandemic-era hiring….

Indeed, companies' hiring plans, at 5,306 in January, were the lowest for the month since Challenger began logging hiring plans in 2009.

Meanwhile, Challenger tracked 108,435 layoff announcements from US firms in January, more than double the 49,795 cuts announced the same month last year. It was the highest January total since 2009, when 241,749 layoff plans were reported.

Along with the layoffs, later on Thursday we found out that companies haven’t been looking to fill or add positions either.

Job openings dropped in December, widely missing economists' expectations and tumbling to the lowest level since 2020, according to government data released Thursday.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — originally scheduled to be published on Tuesday but delayed by the partial government shutdown — showed there were 6.5 million jobs open at the end of December. Economists polled by Bloomberg had projected 7.25 million openings for the month.

Layoffs and discharges, at 1.8 million, increased slightly from 1.7 million a month earlier. The data was collected before recent announcements of sweeping job cuts from firms including Amazon (AMZN) and UPS (UPS).

Not only was December a significant dropoff in openings, but November’s amount of openings was revised down by 218,000 in this report. In addition, the number of openings declined by more than 1.1 million in the last 3 months of 2025.

That’s the lowest non-pandemic amount of job openings since the end of 2017, and down more than 4,300 openings since the end of 2022. Well, I guess there were some people that wanted to bring back the economy of Trump’s first term, and here we are.

And yet, what happened a day after all of this bad jobs news hit?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the way higher, surging by about 2.5%, or more than 1,200 points, to climb ahead of the 50,000 level for the first time.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 2% in its best session since May of last year. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added about 2.1%, as the indexes bounced back from Thursday's sharp closing losses and a week's worth of selling pressure.

Wall Street is ending the week with a bounce back, as Big Tech CEOs and analysts brushed aside concerns about the impact of new AI tools on legacy tech. The Dow ended the week with a gain of 2.5%, but the benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed the week in the red.

Some of tech's biggest names led the charge. Nvidia (NVDA) surged over 8%, while Broadcom (AVGO) and Tesla (TSLA) posted sizable gains. Some tech gloom persisted as Amazon's (AMZN) shares tumbled 7%. In its earnings, the major cloud provider outlined plans for a massive 2026 jump in spending to at least $200 billion, even as its forecast for operating income fell short.

Friday also had the release of the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey for February, which had another small increase for the month, hitting the highest levels in 6 months. But even that positive economic news comes with a major caveat.

Hmm, it's almost like the stock market and the jobs market aren't connected to each other. Or worse, the stock market is growing at the expense of the jobs market. Which might be nice for the 0.1%ers that make most of their income off of assets, but isn't so good for the bottom 80%ers who rely on actual work for 93% of their incomes.