Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on December 4, 2025

Layoffs in the United States have surpassed 1.1 million in 2025, according to a new report. And even one Fox Business host who is typically in President Donald Trump's corner is taking notice of the dire economic picture heading into 2026.

During a Thursday segment on Fox Business, Maria Bartiromo – who Trump was reportedly considering naming as his running mate in 2024 — read the details of the report aloud on her show, and remarked to panelist John Lonski that she had previously pressed Trump about the impact of new technology on jobs.

"Job cuts surpassed one million – the highest October total since 2003," Bartiromo said. "Companies cite cost-cutting AI in October. John, this is exactly what I asked the president about."

"That's the problem. Not only were announced layoffs ... the highest level since 2020 — that's a recession year — but announced hirings are also down considerably," said Lonski, who is the former chief economist at Moody's Investors Service. "That's not a good mix. And you have to worry about jobs growth. If you don't start growing payrolls, eventually that's going to hurt the growth of consumer incomes and, in turn, consumer spending will suffer."

"The other thing that I want to point out is a lot of these people who are losing jobs because of AI have white-collar jobs. But as you noted, we have a lot of openings for people with skilled trades," he continued. "How in the world are we going to get somebody who has a background in accounting, maybe finance, to become an auto mechanic?"

As both Bartiromo and Lonski observed, artificial intelligence replaced 54,700 jobs in 2025 alone. E-commerce giant Amazon announced in October that it would be replacing approximately 14,000 workers with AI "to operate like the world's largest startup." Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (Challenger) also found in its layoff report that Trump's tariffs are responsible for roughly 8,000 layoffs across the U.S. economy.

Challenger also found that the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, (DOGE) which was led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was responsible for an estimated 300,000 layoffs in 2025. In addition to its impact on public sector employment, residual effects from DOGE were also seen elsewhere, with businesses and nonprofits laying off 21,000 people as a result of federal funding cuts.

Watch the segment below: