Mass layoffs deepen across US economy as job cuts in auto, logistics and tech continue into 2026
Fill out the form at the end of this article for information on building rank-and-file committees to fight the job cuts.
The wave of mass layoffs sweeping the United States in 2025 will continue into the new year, with devastating consequences for workers across multiple industries. This includes the General Motors Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit, where more than 1,100 workers have been permanently laid off and only a single shift will resume operations when production restarts on January 5.
Factory Zero, promoted by GM as a flagship symbol of an “electric vehicle future,” is being reduced to half capacity less than five years after its much-publicized reopening. The cuts are part of a broader downsizing by GM, which has also put more than 1,300 workers on temporary or indefinite layoff at its Ultium Cells battery joint ventures in Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee. These facilities were similarly touted as anchors of a new era of American manufacturing, only to become early victims of collapsing demand, shifting federal policy and corporate restructuring.
A Factory Zero worker, who has been transferred between seven different GM plants over the last two decades—including the now shuttered Lordstown, Ohio assembly and Warren, Michigan transmission factories—told the World Socialist Web Site, “As of right now, the layoffs have begun. On January 5, first shift returns at our plant, and second shift is on indefinite layoff.”
Speaking on the danger that GM could shutter the entire facility, he said, “I’ve seen it done many times. I tell people that all the time, it is nothing for GM to shut these doors and gut this entire plant and be out and gone.”
The worker described a sense of free fall among Factory Zero employees, abandoned by both the corporation and the United Auto Workers union.
We’re all backed into a corner right now and we got no help from the UAW. That’s really how it feels out on the plant floor. We work hard to make these companies money, and we get the short end of the stick every time. We don’t even know where our safety net is anymore. We don’t even know what to grab on to. It’s like we’re just harshly waiting to hit that bottom.
If you ask a union representative about it, immediately you’re almost blacklisted. You’re looked down upon as the black sheep because you’re trying to fight the agenda that is being pushed.
When they started the plant back up in 2021 up until the last year, we worked mandatory six days a week, 10 hours a day, almost 12 hours a day. The entire year, almost seven days a week. Some departments, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. When did it ever become healthy for an employee to work this much?
I know a lot of people that are saying, there’s no point in paying union dues because we’re not getting represented properly. They’re not doing anything for us. They’re giving away our skilled trades work. They’re not standing up for us when we run into safety issues, quality issues, or when workers have to purchase our own tools to build the company’s car.
Referring to UAW President Shawn Fain’s embrace of Trump’s tariffs, he added:
The tariffs are not helping. We’re not seeing anything good coming from that. You cut from Canada, you cut from Mexico, and say you’re bringing jobs back. But here we are at the end of 2025 and the biggest layoffs are happening right now. Where was any of that good grace that was promised?
He stressed that the attack on Factory Zero workers is part of a generalized assault on the working class.
It’s not just happening here. If you open your eyes you can see everybody’s dealing with the same problems in the exact same way in every single field. Everybody’s cutting costs, cutting quality, cutting the worker. Everybody’s putting more on the worker for no raise. Inflation is going up.
The destruction of jobs at GM is mirrored at Ford, which has cancelled production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup and shuttered the BlueOval SK battery joint venture in Kentucky. More than 1,500 workers were informed in mid-December that their company was being dissolved, just months after the $5.8 billion facility entered production. Many had relocated or left higher-paying jobs based on promises of stable employment that evaporated overnight.
These auto layoffs are part of a far broader assault on the working class. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, US employers announced 1.17 million job cuts in 2025, the highest total since 2020. Artificial intelligence alone accounted for nearly 55,000 layoffs, as corporations eliminate layers of management and intensified exploitation of the remaining workforce.
Logistics has been among the hardest-hit sectors. United Parcel Service eliminated approximately 48,000 jobs nationwide in 2025 as part of a sweeping restructuring that included facility closures and mass layoffs. In Alabama, UPS has filed notice that 128 jobs will be cut at its Montgomery facility beginning in early 2026, underscoring the nationwide character of the layoffs and the erosion of supposedly “secure” logistics employment.
Major job cuts across their US and global operations have also been announced by Amazon (14,000), Verizon (13,000), Intel (15,000), Nestlé (16,000) Procter & Gamble (7,000), Target (1,800), HP (4,000-6,000) and other corporate giants. Official statistics obscure the depth of the crisis: while initial jobless claims remain relatively low, continuing claims are rising and consumer confidence has fallen for months, reflecting growing fear of job loss in a stagnant labor market defined by mass layoffs without rehiring.
Internationally, the same processes are unfolding. In Germany and across Europe, auto manufacturers like VW and suppliers like Bosch and ZF have announced tens of thousands of layoffs, plant closures and restructuring as they confront declining demand, rising costs and global competition.
It is in response to this global assault that the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has issued a statement calling for an internationally coordinated counteroffensive against the bloodbath of layoffs in the auto industry. The IWA-RFC warns that the defense of jobs cannot be carried out plant by plant or nation by nation, but requires unified action by workers across borders against the transnational corporations that dominate the global economy.
The statement calls on workers to reject all layoffs and insists that corporations have no right to throw workers out of work to protect profits. If production is reduced, it argues, the workweek must be reduced with no loss of pay. Against the nationalist poison promoted by governments and union bureaucracies alike, it advances the necessity of building rank-and-file committees controlled democratically by workers themselves.
The experiences of GM and Ford workers underscore the central lesson of the present period: the corporations are global, the layoffs are global, and the struggle to defend jobs must be global.
An internationally coordinated industrial counter-offensive by the working class must be combined with a political struggle by workers to take political power in their own hands and reorganize global production along socialist lines so the revolutionary advances in technology can be used for the common good not the impoverishment of the working class.
Fill out the form below for information on building rank-and-file committees to fight the job cuts.