It's January. This is when annual budgets are set. Layoffs are a natural consequence of "the budget for this year is smaller than last year". Hell, even if t

It's January. This is when annual budgets are set. Layoffs are a natural consequence of "the budget for this year is smaller than last year". Hell, even if the budget is the same size, it'll result in layoffs if anyone got promoted, anyone got cost-of-living raises, etc. A 4% cost-of-living adjustment for everyone results in a ~4% layoff if annual budgets remain constant. Also, the market is predicting rate cuts in March. There is always the chance of the market being wrong, and several prominent institutions (notably Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase) have said they believe this is overly optimistic and it's unclear if we're even done with rate hikes, let alone rate cuts. The Fed statements themselves do not come anywhere close to what the market is predicting - the dot plot (which has trended overoptimistic for the last 3 years) predicts 3 rate cuts, while the market predicts 7.