Layoffs have always made headlines, but in 2025, they’re dominating news feeds more than ever. From major tech firms to government agencies, stories about job cuts are surfacing across industries at a much faster rate than they did last year.
To understand how workforce reductions are being covered in the media, we analyzed more than 5,000 headlines about layoffs. We looked at how often layoffs were mentioned alongside different industries, federal agencies, and large companies, and examined the most common language used in those headlines.
Below, we break down which sectors and organizations are making news, how 2025 compares to 2024, and what the data tells us about how the stories of layoffs are being told.
Key Takeaways
In 2024, there were 7,372 news stories about layoffs. By mid-March 2025, that number has already reached 5,395. Less than 3 months into the year, 2025 has already seen 73% as many layoff-related stories as all of 2024.
Which Industries Are Making the Most Layoff Headlines?
Layoffs have made frequent headlines in 2025, with some industries showing up more often than others. To understand which sectors are drawing the most media attention, we started our analysis by looking at layoff-related stories across 10 major industries.
Key findings from the analysis:
- Across all industries analyzed, there have already been 867 industry-related news stories about layoffs in 2025. That’s 69% of the total from all of 2024 already, which saw 1,261 layoff-related stories.
- Hospitality and transportation are each already nearing their 2024 totals. Hospitality is at 57% , and transportation is at 82% of last year’s count.
- Education has seen the sharpest rise in media coverage. In just two-and-a-half months, there have been 419 stories — 8.5 times more than in all of 2024.
- Coverage of government sector layoffs as a general topic has surged, with 261 headlines in 2025 — 15 times more than 2024’s coverage.
To take a deeper dive into government layoff headlines, we'll identify the agencies that are mentioned most frequently.
Which Government Agency Layoffs Are Getting the Most Media Attention?
After identifying which industries are drawing the most attention in articles on layoffs, we looked closer at the government agencies appearing in layoff headlines this year. Many of these mentions are tied to DOGE, the 2025 federal cost-cutting initiative led by Elon Musk.
Key findings from the analysis:
- There have already been over 1,000 more stories about specific government agency layoffs in 2025 than in all of 2024.
- The IRS has dominated the coverage, with 417 stories so far — about 40% more than any other agency.
- NOAA, the FAA, and the Department of Education have each been the subject of over 100 layoff-related stories in
- For context, in the entirety of 2024, we found just 11 total layoff-related stories about the 10 agencies analyzed.
With so much news surrounding workforce reductions, we wanted to examine the headlines for these stories and see what sort of language is being used in them most often.
"Now more than ever, job seekers should remember that a layoff is not a reflection of their worth," says Nicholas Roarty, Chief Operations Officer at Employers.io. "More often than not, it's a business decision, not a personal one. The key is to stay proactive—focus on networking, upskilling, and remaining adaptable."
What Headlines About Layoffs Are Really Saying
To understand how layoffs are discussed in the media, we analyzed the language used in over 5,000 headlines from 2025. The word cloud above highlights the most frequently used terms in those stories.
One company that stands out in 2025 coverage is Meta, which has already appeared in 25% more layoff-related headlines than it did in all of 2024. Meanwhile, Tesla, which had more than 300 stories written about layoffs last year, has seen just 12 so far this year.
Readers can hover over the words above for more context on how often each appears in 2025 headlines about layoffs.
Closing Thoughts
Layoffs have dominated headlines in early 2025, with news coverage already nearing last year’s totals across industries, government agencies, and major companies. From a sharp rise in stories about education and federal agencies to shifts in how companies like Meta and Tesla are covered, the data reveals how workforce changes are shaping national conversations.
For job seekers, staying informed is more important than ever. Employers.io offers tools to help navigate these changes by connecting candidates with roles that match their experience and goals, even in uncertain markets. As layoffs continue to make news, finding the right job starts with having the right resources.
Methodology
To determine how much more frequently layoffs have been appearing in the news, we analyzed stories that involved layoffs and different industries, government agencies, and large companies.
We pulled the number of stories that were about layoffs and each of the categories above using Buzzsumo. The tool uses Boolean logic, so we were able to find the number of stories for each term we searched and whether or not they were about layoffs. We were able to pull the number of stories for each individual term and combinations of terms to find out how frequently stories about layoffs included each one.
To finish off the study, we did a text analysis of the most engaging headlines about layoffs in 2025 so far. We filtered out basic words and analyzed the remaining words to determine the most frequent language used in 2025 headlines about layoffs.