Announced job cuts from U.S. employers moved further ahead of 1 million for the year in November as corporate restructuring, artificial intelligence and tariffs have helped pare job rolls, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday.

The firm said layoff plans totaled 71,321 in November, a step down from the massive cuts announced in October but still enough to bring the 2025 total up to 1.17 million. That total is 54% higher than the same 11-month period a year ago and the highest level since 2020, when the Covid pandemic rocked the global economy.

In November, Verizon’s announcement that it would slash more than 13,000 jobs helped drive the total. Tech companies, driven by innovations in artificial intelligence, listed 12,377 reductions, pushing the sector’s 2025 total up 17% from a year ago. AI itself has been cited for 54,694 layoffs this year.

(CNBC - Continue Reading)

Meta is expected to make up to 30% budget cuts for its metaverse initiative, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the discussion. The Facebook parent's shares rose nearly 4% in morning trading.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has heavily bet on the augmented-reality unit, with the company changing its name to Meta from Facebook in 2021. The unit has burned more than $60 billion since 2020.

The proposed metaverse cuts are part of the company's annual budget planning for 2026, which included a series of meetings at Zuckerberg's compound in Hawaii last month, Bloomberg reported. Cuts that high would most likely include layoffs as early as January, according to the report.

(MSN - Continue Reading)

The year-end rally is still at the starting gate, though all the major indexes are positive for the trailing week and month. Tech is still down 4% for the trailing month as the rest of the market plays catch-up. We’ve gone several days with morning volatility where stocks open strong, then pull back to losses, and then motor higher the rest of the day with a modest pullback at the close. The VIX has been stable this week, well below the mid-November high.

Investors are trying to reconcile this "K-shaped" economy of a strong, well-off consumer and a struggling paycheck-to-paycheck consumer, as well as the huge momentum of the AI build-out, while uncertainty remains as to the timing of the return on investment of AI spending.

(Investing - Continue Reading)