For this year’s roughly 10,000 laid-off Minnesotans, holidays are bittersweet

Christine Strom knew layoffs were coming at the health care system where she’d worked for more than three years, so when she learned in mid-October she was part of them, she wasn’t shocked.

Just sad.

“I think I did everything I could,” said Strom, 55, of Minneapolis. “All I could control was doing my best work and having good relationships with my colleagues.”

Strom is one of more than a million Americans laid off this year, the highest number since 2020, according to a Dec. 4 report from career services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In Minnesota, employers had eliminated nearly 10,000 jobs through November, the most recent month of available data.

Though cuts have happened throughout 2025 — including major reductions to the federal workforce — the end of the calendar year has remained a common time for employers to shed jobs as they assess balance sheets and plan for the coming year. Fourth-quarter layoffs have included employees at corporate heavyweights Target Corp. (based in Minneapolis), Verizon, Amazon and General Motors.

For workers, the demands of the holiday season and the end-of-year hiring slowdown make it an especially tough time to weather a job loss. This year, persistent economic uncertainty and a sputtering job market are adding to the pain.

Strom has been strategic in her job search — networking and identifying companies and roles she thinks would be a good fit — and focusing her plans on early 2026.

While most pending job offers will go out in the new year, overall, it’s unlikely the 2026 job market will differ much from 2025, said Alan Benson, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

“I don’t know if there’s anything special about next year that’s going to make things any easier,” he said.

The U.S. unemployment rate hit 4.6% in November, the highest in more than four years. While it’s not a panic-inducing number, it’s among multiple signs of growing weakness in the labor market, which helps drive the economy as a whole.

According to the Challenger report, the most commonly cited reasons for job cuts this year were Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); “market/economic conditions,” “closing” and “restructuring.” The report counts reductions in the form of early retirement offers and other exit incentives alongside standard layoffs.

About a quarter of job seekers — 1.9 million people — have been unemployed six months or longer. And of those who are employed, a growing number are working part-time because they can’t find a full-time job.

“Companies continue to make those cuts continuously over time, and in doing so, might avoid the headlines,” said Jenna Estlick, president of HR solutions at Minneapolis-based recruiting firm Versique. “But it can cause that same level of anxiety from employees wondering, ‘When is the next shoe going to drop?’ ”

Jamin Johnson, 59, lost her job unexpectedly this spring after six years as a corporate marketing consultant in the senior living industry. In the past, it had taken her about three months to find a new job, and she thought that would be the case again.

But after eight months, Johnson, of Hopkins, is running out of road. She and her adult children skipped Christmas presents this year, and she’s set the end of January as the deadline to find a position.

For now, severance and personal savings are keeping Johnson afloat. And being unemployed has meant more time with family, including her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease.

“It is still hard. It is very defeating,” Johnson said. “But I’m a glass-half-full gal. This will work out. Somebody needs me out there.”