Layoff announcements have been coming fast and furious in the last couple weeks: At Amazon, 16,000 corporate jobs were on the chopping block; at UPS, it was up to 30,000 layoffs, plus facility closures; also at Dow Chemical, Pinterest, and the list goes on.

These latest workforce reductions won’t show up in the January jobs report — originally scheduled to come out on Friday, though it’ll be delayed by the partial government shutdown — because they came after the BLS survey period.

But they do suggest a labor market under increasing stress. Generally, this job market has been described as “low hire, low fire.”

That may be changing, though, according to Andy Challenger at outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

“Job cuts haven’t reached the levels during past recessions, but we’re approaching those levels,” he said.

While long-term unemployment is up, first-time claims for jobless benefits have remained low. However, that’s probably undercounting the number of people actually losing their jobs, said Michele Evermore, senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance.

For low-income workers, unemployment insurance is increasingly difficult to access, she said. For example, “looking at the UPS closures, North Carolina and Alabama only have 13% recipiency rates. So very few people apply for and receive benefits.”

Many companies attribute their recent downsizing to AI, Challenger said. “Companies are able to replace a certain subset of their jobs with artificial intelligence.”

But Daniel Keum at Columbia Business School doesn’t buy that explanation for most of the job cuts.

“Companies are using AI as a pretext, an excuse to let people go,” he said.

A lot of companies overhired during the pandemic, he said, and they’re downsizing now in the face of slowing consumer demand.