SOTS 2nd Hour: Job Cuts Surge, Navigating Big Tech, & LIVE: Charles Schwab, Chime CEOs 11/6/25

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Sara Eisen (0:31)

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up this hour, new data showing job cuts for October, hitting the highest level in 22 years as the government shutdown hits a record. We'll talk to National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett about whether he's worried about potential cracks forming here in the economy. Plus, Charles Schwab just inking a deal to buy private shares marketplace, Forge Global. We will hear from Schwab CEO on this show about the deal. And will Elon Musk's trillion-dollar pay package get approved by shareholders? We'll preview what to expect as the company's annual meeting gets underway. But first, guys, let's talk about the jobs data. Since we're not getting the official data from the government, we are looking to all these private sources. And Challenger Grand Christmas, which is an employment firm, put out, they always do these layoff numbers. This one was a doozy. So, the most job cuts for any October in more than two decades, going back to 2003, companies announced 153,000 about job cuts last month, which was almost triple the number during the same month last year. And the question is, why? Well, if you go to the quote from Challenger in the release, I mean, they do mention disruptive technology and AI changing the landscape. They actually compare it to 2003 when the cell phone was invented.

But there are all sorts of reasons we have heard from companies lately about job cuts. And if you look at Target or UPS or Amazon, I mean, all of these companies have announced job cuts recently. Paramount, Skydance announcing recent job cuts as well. Starbucks, Delta Airlines, CarMax, Rivium Automotive. Yeah, some of them talk about technology. Amazon spoke about that. But a lot of them are just sort of restructuring and right sizing their businesses after hiring a lot during COVID.

David Faber (2:23)

But we're facing challenges a la Paramount. You just have to take out a lot of structural costs if you can.

Sara Eisen (2:28)

Yeah, and that also comes from an acquisition. But the bottom line is it's adding up to a narrative where we're starting to be a little bit more concerned about the job market. We know the Fed is more concerned right now about the job market and the labor market, and we're just not getting the weekly initial jobless claims.

We hadn't seen a lot of layoffs in those numbers. And the caveat here is that the challenger data is very volatile. It doesn't always correspond to what we get on the government data. But we're paying closer attention to it these days because we're not getting the government data. And we are starting to hear these announcements from companies.

Carl Quintanilla (3:02)

Yeah, couple that with the year-to-date hiring, I think the worst since 2011, weakest holiday seasonal hiring since 2012 So for a long time, we talked about no hire, no fire. That's changing a little bit.

Sara Eisen (3:15)

Well, that's the question, right? Yeah, is it changing? Are we starting to really get a pile up of layoffs and firings? Because we knew that the job growth picture had already stalled. How bad is it going to be? And should the Fed keep cutting interest rates to offset it? That's certainly a question. The other data point, guys, that I wanted to bring up, this is really crazy. So we got some data from the National Association of Realtors on housing. We've been talking about here on this show for a while.

Diane Olek has been talking about how difficult it is out there to buy a home, the affordability challenges, the mortgage rates. Did you guys see this? The median age of first-time homebuyer, 40 years old. And that's like a shocking number. That's a record high. And by the way, in 2021, that number was 33 years old. It's a big jump in just a few years. Back when they started tracking the data in 1981, maybe when you bought your first home, David, the median age was 29 years old. I mean, it's a huge problem. And when you look at things like the elections and the inequality in this country, this is another way to look at it. It's harder. It's student debt. It's housing prices going up. And then as a result, you get these lost decades where people aren't building equity in their homes because they don't own homes. Repeat buyers, median age, 59 years old.