UK's Biggest Firms Cut Over 130,000 Jobs in Two Years

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More than 130,000 jobs have gone from Britain's biggest businesses in two years, a City AM analysis has found. The paper tallied at least 137,000 roles lost or earmarked for removal at major UK companies since Labour took office in July 2024.

The count draws on more than 250 separate media reports of layoffs, job cuts and company administrations.

Named examples

Jaguar Land Rover said earlier this year it would cut as many as 4,000 roles. The hospitality group Whitbread removed 3,800. Sainsbury's cut 3,000 staff last year.

About 30% of the losses came from financial, legal and professional services. Barclays said last week it expected to shed as many as 5,000 roles as it uses more automation. Insurers and the big-four accounting firms have made similar moves.

Retail and hospitality took a larger share still. They account for around 45,000 of the cuts identified, following thousands of shop, pub and restaurant closures in the period.

Labour market data

Government figures show the redundancy rate rising from two per 1,000 employees in September 2023 to five in September 2025. Google data indicates that searches for "redundancy" have doubled over the same period.

UK unemployment hovered around 5% in the first half of 2026, against about 4% when Labour came to power. In September, vacancies fell below 700,000 for the first time in five years. Almost 1 million 16-24-year-olds are not in work, education or training.

Why firms are cutting

The layoffs follow a jump in employment costs over two years: higher national insurance contributions, minimum wage rises and tighter employment law. Chancellor John Healey is expected to announce another above-average minimum wage increase in the Budget this afternoon.

Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith told City AM: "There is a direct connection between the jobs tax and firms laying off staff. It was entirely foreseeable that when you put up the cost and the risk of something, you'll get less of it."

Ben Caswell, a senior economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, linked part of the trend to the National Living Wage and national insurance. "For an entry-level worker, it was a ten per cent increase in the unit labour costs of hiring someone in just a single year," he said. He added that there was no "smoking gun evidence" that AI is a major cause of rising unemployment and falling vacancies. The sectors where AI would be expected to concentrate are not the ones with the big dip in vacancies, he said. It is "quite broad-based".

Molly Monks, an insolvency expert at Parker Walsh, said hospitality firms make up most of the companies that have approached her over cash flow problems. "Profit margins are so small, and the footfall isn't what it was, that people are just finding everything a little bit too tight," she said. In her words, business rates, rent and the cost of employees are all hard for companies to keep up with.

Source: City AM