No matter where your finger lands on a spinning globe, corporations have spent much of 2025 announcing reductions in their workforces, impacting most parts of world, including Luxembourg.
Amazon, ArcelorMittal, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Docler, Quintet Private Bank, PwC, Lufthansa and Nestlé are only a fraction of the companies that made headlines with announcements of redundancies and slashed teams.
Some describe the cuts as “restructuring”, while others blame the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Many companies claim they are reducing bureaucracy, while several point to “geopolitical uncertainty” in their official communications.
Whatever the reasons, anyone who managed to hold on to their job this year can consider themselves lucky.
The coming year may bring surprises
Darren Robinson
Managing partner at recruitment agency Anderson Wise
Here is a look back at some of the most significant developments in the year that is now coming to an end, a year that will be remembered for its large wave of layoffs.
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Prime cuts at Amazon
One of the most high-profile stories of the year came late in the autumn, when Amazon announced in October that it intended to cut around 14,000 corporate jobs worldwide as part of a “major restructuring”.
The retail giant at its European headquarters in Luxembourg will be slashing 370 jobs after signing a social plan with staff delegates on 12 December after two weeks of talks. The company at the start of the year employed 4,370 people, according to statistics office Statec, making it one of Luxembourg’s biggest employers. Trade unions had previously said the company planned 470 cuts.
Amazon plans 14,000 job cuts worldwide, including hundreds in Luxembourg © Photo credit: AFP
Staff delegates at the end of the first week of talks accused management of not doing enough to reduce the number of dismissals, despite intervention efforts led by the former labour minister Georges Mischo and by Prime Minister Luc Frieden. In the end, cuts were fewer than expected and packages generous, according to negotiators.
Media reports had initially suggested 35,000 layoffs worldwide, and while the number announced by Amazon this year was less than half of that, the company in a blog post said optimisation efforts would continue next year.
Amazon’s senior leadership has hinted at a future in which artificial intelligence will replace a significant number of roles. In a message to employees in June, chief executive Andy Jassy said the company was integrating AI across a wide range of operations, particularly in logistics, with the aim of cutting costs.
Reductions across finance
Job cuts were not limited to the tech sector. In financial services, multiple institutions made moves that affected Luxembourg operations as well.
JPMorgan spent much of the year trimming teams after a slowdown in investment-banking revenues, cutting several hundred jobs across Europe as part of “a push to streamline operations”. Thirty-three are so far affected in Luxembourg as a result of the decision of closing its mobility payment solution, a unit it had acquired from carmaker VW in 2021.
The integration of Credit Suisse into UBS continued to create ripple effects. While most of those cuts were announced in 2024, their implementation continued into 2025 and totalled 155 positions in Luxembourg.
ING Luxembourg confirmed that 124 employees would be laid off as part of a social plan linked to a restructuring that followed its earlier decision to withdraw from the retail banking market in the country.
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PwC, according to the Financial Times, abandoned its five-year target to add 100,000 net new jobs by mid-2026 and shrank its global workforce by about 5,600 in this financial year as revenue growth slowed to roughly 2.7% in annual revenue and its advisory business saw more subdued demand late in the year.
The firm has also trimmed staff in markets such as the US and Middle East and reduced graduate recruitment in the UK amid broader structural adjustments. PwC’s autumn intake in Luxembourg stayed roughly the same between 2024 and 2025, although that includes staff at its office in Porto, which services the Grand Duchy from Portugal.
Quintet has announced it will slash 300 job cuts across Europe. © Photo credit: Gerry Huberty
Quintet, the Luxembourg-based private bank, entered its own restructuring phase as it struggled with rising costs and years of uneven profitability, resulting in around 300 job cuts across Europe. The number of layoffs in Luxembourg is not yet known.
Rising bankruptcies and industry in retreat
The construction and industrial sectors were offered little respite in 2025.
Nearly 600 companies in Luxembourg were declared bankrupt in the first half of 2025, with 92 additional liquidations in the same period, according to data from statistics agency Statec. Within the construction industry, 89 firms collapsed, resulting in approximately 515 lost jobs.
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Over the first three quarters of 2025, the total number of bankruptcies rose to 828, compared with 815 during the same period in 2024. In that period, the construction sector accounted for 115 bankruptcies and an estimated 590 salaried jobs lost, roughly a quarter of total job losses linked to bankruptcies.
ArcelorMittal cuts 600 jobs in France; Luxembourg staff spared for now. © Photo credit: ArcelorMiittal
For industrial heavyweights such as ArcelorMittal, which has its headquarters in Luxembourg, 2025 offered bleak signals. The company announced plans to cut around 600 jobs at a number of its production and support-service sites in northern France in April. There have been no cuts announced for Luxembourg.
In manufacturing, Mylar specialty films at the start of the year announced the potential loss of 95 jobs after management decided to close parts of its production line due to low profitability.
Even satellites aren’t safe
You won’t even find safety in the depths of space. After SES absorbed its competitor Intelsat, the combined company began reducing jobs to eliminate overlapping roles.
More than 600 Luxembourg-based workers found themselves facing months of uncertainty as management reviewed staffing needs in the newly merged organisation.
SES reduces roles after merging with Intelsat. © Photo credit: Lex Kleren
Nearly 60 SES employees have either already been let go this year or will receive notice before year-end, said OGBL Secretary General Julie Roden in November, with many others remaining under review. The company did not comment on the number of job cuts.
Industry sources projected that the global scale of reductions across SES and Intelsat could eventually reach several thousand positions.
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Not to entertaining
Adult entertainment and tech group Docler was part of the wave of companies that expanded rapidly during the pandemic years, only to initiate significant cuts as growth slowed. The company confirmed in August that it would dismiss 115 employees in Luxembourg, representing almost half of its local workforce.
Reductions in its Budapest operations were even larger, where around 200 positions were cut as the company shifted to AI-driven systems.
Employees described abrupt changes and, in some cases, personal financial loss. One worker who relocated to Luxembourg for a role that was withdrawn shortly after his start date told the Luxembourg Times that he had lost around €20,000 due to relocation, housing and travel expenses for him and his family.
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In the world of media, the German sister-branch of Luxembourg’s RTL – RTL Deutschland – launched a sweeping reorganisation, cutting 600 jobs across its sites as part of a plan to respond to competition from major US streaming services. The Luxembourg offices were untouched by the plans.
Luxembourg media sees layoffs for a “reorganisation”. © Photo credit: dpa/Getty Images
Social media monitoring company Talkwalker, founded in Luxembourg and acquired by Hootsuite last year announced in October that it will make 20% of its worldwide staff redundant, but declined to comment on the reason behind the layoffs. The company employed 41 staff in Luxembourg in 2024, according to an annual report, but there were no details on potential losses in Luxembourg.
Will the storm pass?
2025 will likely be remembered as the year that layoffs became a global headline phenomenon.
If there’s a silver lining to this situation, it may be the increased attention to retraining, support, government intervention and union negotiations that have emerged in response, potentially laying the groundwork for a much more flourishing 2026. Statec forecasts a labour market rebound starting next year.
Darren Robinson, managing partner at recruitment agency Anderson Wise, said in an email to the Luxembourg Times that he thinks that 2026 will see stronger employment growth and a decline in unemployment. © Photo credit: British-Luxembourg Society
“Layoffs are likely to decrease rather than escalate as the economic recovery takes shape. Sectors such as construction, IT and finance are expected to prioritise stability over further cuts,” said Darren Robinson, managing partner at recruitment agency Anderson Wise. “Given Luxembourg’s status as a financial hub, the region is poised for measured hiring growth rather than contraction,” he said.
“However, it’s essential to consider that changing trade alliances, evolving EU regulations, and unpredictable geopolitical tensions may impact investment sentiment. Thus, while forecasts provide insight, they remain projections. The coming year may bring surprises, reminding both businesses and policymakers that agility, rather than certainty, is the essence of resilience,” Robinson said.