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If the first month of 2024 offers any indication, America’s largest employers – fresh off mass layoffs last year – are going to keep cutting. In just the past few weeks, Alphabet, Amazon, Citigroup, Ebay, Macy’s, Microsoft, Shell, Sports Illustrated, and Wayfair have all announced job cuts.

On Tuesday, United Parcel Service said it plans to cut 12,000 jobs and call workers back to the office five days a week. 

The layoffs come as the economy is sending mixed signals. On one hand, US job openings just rose to a three-month high. Stocks are near an all-time high, once again fueling talk of an economic soft landing. And a key gauge of US consumer sentiment recently jumped by the most since 2005.

On the other hand, the growing list of high-profile job cuts is adding a jolt of uncertainty to the white-collar world where fears of a recession and displacement by generative artificial intelligence have become standard water-cooler discussions. The growing crackdown on remote work is also causing anxiety.

“It creates a ripple effect and a fear factor,” said Ariel Schur, chief executive officer of ABS Staffing Solutions in New York. 

How worried should you be about your job? Bloomberg News interviewed economists, recruiters, consultants and career coaches across the country to assess the current state of the job market and get strategies for navigating it. Here is what they said: