White collar employment is sharply declining: The number of the S&P 500 employees fell -400,000 in 2025, to 28.1 million, posting its first annual decline since 2016. This follows 8 consecutive years of uninterrupted employment growth, adding over +3.0 million jobs in total.

The decline was driven by UPS, $UPS, Oracle, $ORCL, Amazon, $AMZN, Meta, $META, Intel, $INTC, and Microsoft, $MSFT, as corporations raced to cut costs and redirect spending toward AI. In 2026, layoffs are set to continue with Amazon cutting ~16,000 corporate jobs, Meta slashing ~8,000 positions, a