• I've been to over 140 countries, but there's only one that I return to every year: Spain.
• I love everything from the food and history to the public transit system and annual festivals.
• Plus, the country is home to my favorite city in Europe — and maybe even the world — Seville.

Spending more than 20 years in the British Army means I'd already seen a lot of the world by the time I was 40 years old.

And since then, I've continued to enjoy traveling, reaching 140 countries (and counting).

Out of all the places I've been, though, only one keeps me coming back for annual visits: Spain. I've traveled there at least once a year for the past 15 years and am still captivated by its food, history, and more.

The quality of the food is fantastic.

From delicious street food to incredible restaurants, the meals in Spain never disappoint.

When visiting San Sebastián, I love having the pintxos — bite-sized snacks traditionally found in the Basque Country of northern Spain. One of my favorites is gildas, small skewers of green olives, anchovies, and pickled Guindilla peppers.

Meanwhile, the best pimientos de padrón (cooked Padrón peppers) I've ever eaten were at the Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid.

And my favorite restaurant in the world, Alfarería 21 Casa Montalván, is in Seville. The food there is great, but what really makes me love it is the staff. In my experience, everyone has always been attentive and incredibly friendly.

My favorite beer, Alhambra 1925, is also Spanish, and having it is always a special treat.

I love immersing myself in the country's history.

One of the most-visited tourist sites in Spain is the Alhambra, a medieval palace and fortress in Granada, renowned for its complex designs and Islamic architecture.

I especially love visiting the "whispering gallery," an effect found in the Hall of the Abencerrajes. A local explained it to me during one of my many visits to the Alhambra: Essentially, the architecture allows a whisper to be heard on the other side of the room.

And just nearby is the Patio de Los Leones (Patio of the Lions), a courtyard featuring a fountain complete with 12 marble lions. I recommend booking tickets as early as possible, as they tend to sell quickly.

Other sites I recommend visiting are the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, which houses the famous Picasso painting "Guernica," and the Museo de la Paz de Guernica, which depicts the story of the bombing of the city during the Spanish Civil War.

The local festivals are unmatched.

Almost every town, city, and village in Spain has an annual feria (festival), and my favorite is undoubtedly La Feria del Caballo (The Horse Fair) in Jerez de la Frontera.

Held every May at the González Hontoria fairground, the festival features plenty of food, drinks, dancing, and a program of equestrian events.

It's beautiful during the day, but at night, the grounds are lit up in a spectacular way that makes everything look magical.

Another festival I enjoy attending is Las Fallas, held annually in March in Valencia. Hundreds of wooden and papier-mâché monuments called fallas are constructed around the city, and then, to conclude the festival, they're burned.

These structures often portray local and world dignitaries or critique current events, creating a blend of art, satire, and tradition that's really worth watching.

In my experience, the public transportation system has been very accessible.

Cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Seville have public transportation systems that cover a lot of ground and are reasonably priced. Some single-ride bus tickets cost as little as €1.50 ($1.75).

Plus, throughout the country, I've consistently found the public transportation to be reliable, clean, and affordable.

On my last visit to Valencia, I easily took the metro and a bus to the beach, before heading to the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences) again by metro and bus — a door-to-door experience without a problem.

Plus, the country is home to my favorite city in Europe — and maybe the world — Seville.

From the street art and Flamenco dancing in the Plaza de España to square trees and unique architecture, Seville has so much to offer.

But above all, what I love most about the city is its people. They're some of the friendliest folk I've ever come across. Whenever I sit in a bar or a restaurant there for half an hour, I leave with new friends.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been invited (and gone) to parties or events held by someone I met just two hours prior in Seville.

I can't wait to visit Spain again.

Overall, everything in this country has a charm unmatched by anywhere else I've been.

Though I've been to Spain over a dozen times, I never tire of savoring the local cuisine, taking in the beautiful views, and exploring its incredible architecture.

I'm already looking forward to returning next year to see La Sagrada Familia finally completed after more than 140 years of construction. While there, I'm sure I'll enjoy plenty of other new adventures, too.

• Adtech company Teads is laying off staff, Business Insider has learned.
• A spokesperson said the reduction will affect less than 10% of its workforce.
• The layoffs follow the merger of Outbrain and Teads 10 months ago.

Adtech company Teads told employees this week it is laying off staff across its global offices, Business Insider has learned.

A spokesperson for Teads confirmed the layoffs, adding that they affected less than 10% of the company's head count. They declined to provide further comment. Teads had roughly 1,800 employees as of November.

The news comes roughly 10 months after Outbrain, the adtech company best known for its content recommendation widgets, closed its $900 million acquisition of Teads from the European telecommunications giant Altice. Though Outbrain was the acquirer, it rebranded to become Teads.

David Kostman, formerly Outbrain's CEO, became CEO of Teads once the merger was completed. At the time of the deal's closing in February, Kostman said the deal would create a company that addressed "a large gap in the advertising industry," combining Teads' video expertise with Outbrain's performance marketing capabilities to build "a scaled end-to-end platform that can drive outcomes, from branding to consideration to purchase, across screens."

It's not been smooth sailing.

Teads' share price is down more than 90% year to date. The company missed on both revenue and earnings per share in its third quarter and issued a profit warning.

Kostman said on the company's November earnings call that Teads had experienced complexities due to the merger process, as well as "macro volatility in certain geographies and verticals."

The company recently hired adtech veteran Mollie Spilman as its chief commercial officer, as part of its plan to turn around its business.

This is a developing story. More to follow. Check back for updates.

• Spotify Wrapped engaged 200 million users in roughly the first 24 hours, a 19% increase year-over-year, the company said.
• It took 62 hours to hit the same 200 million user metric in 2024.
• The annual Wrapped recap drives Spotify's active user and subscriber growth, CEO Daniel Ek has said.

The numbers are in, and Spotify Wrapped is a smash success this year.

Within about 24 hours of the yearly run-down's launch, Spotify has already seen a broad uptick in engagement. Wrapped 2025 over 200 million engaged users, the company said, a 19% increase year-over-year.

In 2024, it took 62 hours to hit that same 200 million mark.

Wrapped is built to be shared, both in the group chats and on social media. Sharing across screenshots, downloads, and in-app features, hit 500 million in about 24 hours. That's a 41% increase year-over-year.

"This year, we pushed to make Wrapped bigger, bolder, and rooted in human creativity and connection," Marc Hazan, Spotify's senior vice president of marketing and partnerships, wrote in a statement. "We are delighted that our users are loving this year's experience and engaging in record time."

Wrapped is a crucial for Spotify's growth — and has been known to inspire envy among subscribers to rival services like Apple Music. On the company's fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Daniel Ek said that Wrapped was a "huge driver behind our MAU and subscriber growth," and that it consistently boosted Q4 performance.

In 2024, Wrapped ultimately engaged 245 million users, per Spotify co-president Alex Norström. The 2025 edition is now within spitting distance of that goal — and only a day in.

The company spends more than a year preparing for Spotify Wrapped, a process which you can read about here.

• New testing options could make it easier to screen for the most common cause of cervical cancer.
• An FDA-approved kit could allow for testing without a pap smear or pelvic exam.
• The shift is among medical innovations aiming to curb the rising number of early-onset cancers.

People will soon be able to collect their own samples for cervical cancer screening, according to a major new update to the American Cancer Society's screening guidelines.

It's the biggest shift in cervical cancer prevention since HPV testing became the preferred alternative to routine pap smears in 2014.

The new guidance allows patients to swab themselves to test for human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection that is the primary cause of cervical cancer.

Cervical cancer rates are rising, particularly in younger people, and screening has declined in recent years.

The hope is that this change — part of a broader trend in healthcare making preventative care simpler — will help to catch more cases by speeding up screening.

While the American Cancer Society (ACS) does not dictate federal screening rules, its guidelines are widely used by oncologists and health systems, often paving the way for formal policy changes.

New technology is helping cancer screening to "evolve," said Dr. Robert Smith, senior author of the report and epidemiologist at the ACS.

"These updated recommendations will help to improve compliance with screening and reduce the risk of cervical cancer," Smith said in a press release.

Screening is crucial for cancer prevention

Cervical cancer is among the most preventable — and treatable — types of cancer, thanks to HPV vaccinations and routine screening. But rates of both have dropped in recent years, in part because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to preventive care.

Until recently, HPV screenings meant booking an appointment with a clinician to collect a sample and do a pelvic exam.

That shifted in 2024, when the FDA green-lit testing for self-collected samples, initially in healthcare settings like primary care offices or mobile health clinics. This year, the agency went a step further, approving at-home test options with telehealth support.

Research suggests the testing results for self-collected samples are on par with those collected by physicians when it comes to screening for HPV. Some data found they're slightly less accurate, which is why some doctors still prefer clinical samples when possible, according to the ACS.

Still, having an alternative to pelvic exams could increase HPV screening for people who may find it hard to get an appointment due lack of insurance, long wait lists, or logistical hurdles like scheduling, transportation, or childcare.

Self-collection could also increase testing rates for people who may find a pelvic exam intimidating or uncomfortable, whether due to past trauma, medical anxiety, or simply personal preference.

In Australia, where self-collection for HPV became widely available in 2022, rates of cervical cancer have declined, and screening has increased among patients who had previously not been tested.

How it works

Kits for self-collecting samples for HPV testing are available now via prescription from your doctor (or in some cases, through a virtual appointment, depending on what state you live in).

Using the kit is fairly straightforward: you use a device that looks like a large Q-tip or tampon to swab the vagina for a sample, then send that sample to a lab for screening. If the results are negative, you don't need to get an in-person Pap smear.

For certain abnormal results, the next step may be a clinician-collected sample, or another HPV screening in one to three years, according to NIH guidelines.

The current guidelines recommend starting cervical screening at age 25 for people of average risk, and that HPV testing be done every five years through age 65. The full screening guideline updates were published in the American Cancer Society's CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
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"What's your age?" isn't typically a fair question, but Spotify's making it OK.

Spotify Wrapped is back, and the big, new feature for the streamer's year-end recap for users is the "listening age." While some weren't too exciting — my listening age (34) wasn't far off from my real one (36) — others had a different experience, like newsletter editor Grace Lett, 28, whose listening age was 51.

Grace took the news in stride, but others weren't so happy, writes BI's Katie Notopoulos.

The whole thing might seem like a silly gimmick (it is), but it's also the perfect representation of Spotify Wrapped: a smart marketing tool to get people talking about their Spotify use with each other.

There's also a method to the madness. Wrapped isn't just about doing a quick search of users' top artists and songs. (Justice and "Hate" by ThxSoMch for me, since I know you were dying to know.)

Wrapped takes the entire year, with work for next year's edition beginning as soon as the current year's drops. Executives analyze reactions on social media and figure out how to adjust going forward. Three Spotify executives walked BI's Henry Chandonnet through the whole process.

Spotify Wrapped isn't easily replicable.

Like most popular things, plenty of companies have tried recreating Spotify's success. That includes rival YouTube, which launched YouTube Recap this year.

But few, if any, have penetrated the zeitgeist quite like Spotify.

Some platforms don't deserve a recap. I'd be depressed if I saw how much I spent on takeout this year or the number of hours I logged playing video games.

Others come off as too braggadocious. I would rather gouge out my eyes than see a recap of your Strava or Peloton history.

Music is a sweet spot, though. It's fun to look back at what you listened to throughout the year, kind of like catching up with an old friend. And there's a genuine interest in how others' lists stack up. (It's always fun finding an undercover Swiftie or a lowkey Deadhead.)

One group still seemed unimpressed on Spotify's big day: investors. Spotify's stock finished down almost 3.5%.

And isn't it ironic? Don't you think?

• I sailed on one of the largest cruise ships in the world, Royal Caribbean's Wonder of the Seas.
• I brought a carry-on suitcase and a backpack for the seven-night Caribbean cruise.
• I was glad I packed light, but had some regrets. I longed for earplugs and warmer clothing.

My first cruise was a huge learning experience — especially when it came to packing.

Back in April 2022, I spent seven nights on Royal Caribbean's Wonder of the Seas — one of the world's largest cruise ships — and brought just a carry-on suitcase and a backpack.

While packing light made the trip easier, I did forget a few critical items. Here's everything I was thankful I had during my voyage — and the items I longed for and will remember to pack next time.

One of the best things I packed was a magnet.

The stateroom decks comprised long hallways lined with identical blue doors, so my magnet made it easier to find my cabin.

But I wish I'd downloaded some movies and shows to watch on my phone in my room.

The cruise ship's WiFi wasn't strong enough for me to stream videos.

I was glad I packed sunscreen for long days in the sun.

I enjoyed a few beach days during my cruise, so sunscreen was essential. And I was sure to pack a reef safe brand since I was visiting multiple beaches.

But I should have remembered to bring some aloe vera gel for the day I forgot to lather up.

Aloe vera typically soothes and cools my burns, so next time, I'll pack some in case I forget to apply sunscreen.

I was glad I brought a rash guard to wear while swimming in the ocean.

An excursion guide at one of the ports informed me that some beaches in the Caribbean, like Tulum, Mexico, don't allow sunscreen in the ocean to protect wildlife.

But the water was so clear that I wished I had a waterproof case for my phone to take pictures.

As other cruisers snorkeled with phones in hand, I realized I was missing an opportunity to capture ocean life.

This sun hat also came in handy to block the sun.

I don't typically wear my sun hat — especially not in my home city, New York — so the cruise was the perfect occasion to pull it out of my closet.

I wish I'd also brought an adjustable cap for windy days on the top decks when my sun hat wouldn't stay on my head.

Mornings and evenings on the ship's top decks were so windy that I had to leave my hat in my room to avoid chasing it around.

Even though the weather was hot during the day, this sweater was handy for cool, windy nights and mornings.

I ended up wearing my sweater every day during the Caribbean cruise.

But I only packed one pair of pants and had to wear them every night.

In hindsight, I should have packed a couple more pairs of pants. Sweatpants would have been especially useful at night on the outdoor decks.

I should have brought a windbreaker, too, to keep me warmer on the top decks in the morning and at night.

I was often chilly at night in my sweater alone.

I wish I'd brought a bar of detergent to wash my clothes since I packed light, and laundry services on the ship cost extra.

On my cruise, Royal Caribbean's laundry service charged for each article of clothing — $4 a shirt, $9 a dress, and $2 per pair of underwear.

But at least I packed the right shoes.

I packed two pairs of shoes: sneakers for walking and waterproof sandals for the beach and pools.

Thankfully, I also remembered to bring a waist pack to carry a few things when I didn't feel like lugging my backpack around.

A small pack was handy during port stops and while exploring the ship.

I was also glad I brought a digital watch to keep on ship time.

Ship time is the time zone that cruise ships adhere to even when docked at ports in different time zones.

However, I wish I had downloaded guidebooks for the ports I visited to get a better idea of what to do.

My ship stopped in Roatan, Honduras; Costa Maya and Cozumel, Mexico; and Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas, CocoCay.

I wanted to try my best to avoid illness and was glad I packed vitamins …

I packed vitamins to support my immune system since I was coming in contact with many people.

… and medicine to combat motion sickness, which I experienced frequently.

I always pack Dramamine on my trips to avoid motion sickness.

More than anything, I wish I had earplugs to help me sleep during rough nights at sea, which sounded like thunder in my stateroom.

It was especially loud since I was at the front of the ship, where seasoned cruisers said movement on ships feels the strongest.

Next time, I'll come prepared.

• Eikona is training AI models to help companies retain their customers.
• It helps produce engaging "lifecycle marketing" content across email, SMS, and push notifications.
• Eikona just raised a $5 million seed funding round, led by StageOne Ventures.

A whole host of AI startups are emerging to help marketers create ads to acquire new customers. Tel Aviv-based Eikona is using AI to help marketers retain those customers, an area often referred to as "lifecycle marketing."

On Thursday, Eikona announced a $5 million seed investment round, led by StageOne Ventures. Crecendo Venture Partners, Wix Ventures, and Clarim Ventures also participated.

Eikona adds a generative AI layer to the practice of A/B testing, which is when marketers compare different versions of an email, SMS, or app push notification to figure out which one yields the best results.

Eikona has developed its own AI models that generate content from scratch and create different variations based on their performance. It built its own models on top of various existing popular AI models. Marketers can plug in their brand guidelines and past performance data to help Eikona fine-tune its models to personalize content to different users.

Nir Weingarten, Eikona's cofounder and CEO, told Business Insider that A/B testing can often be hard to scale. And while some marketers are beginning to use AI to help create their marketing content and ads, the prompts they use can sometimes be limited and grounded in their own human biases.

"It's hard to understand what worked — is it because the background was red, or was it a composition of things? This is something AI is good at: combining features," Weingarten said.

Eikona integrates into marketers' existing automation platforms. Asked what could stop a platform like Klaviyo, Braze, or Iterable from producing Eikona-like features themselves, Weingarten said his company's advantage as a startup is that it can move quickly.

"This is the classic innovator's dilemma," Weingarten said."Hopefully, we can get to distribution before the giants get to the innovation."

Weingarten said the company plans to invest the fresh funds in further product development.

"We spent our first two to three years devoted to finding product-market fit," Weingarten said. "We have the notion, we've validated, we understand the ability to create a lot of profit for users, and now we need to make this a product that people like to use."

In five years, Weingarten hopes Eikona will become a market leader in a new category he describes as "adaptive marketing."

"We want it to be a standard in the world, starting in lifecycle marketing, where every message that reaches a client is adapted in a certain way to be much more intimate, more personal, much more warm, and much better performing," Weingarten said.

Check out the pitch deck Eikona used to secure its $5 million seed investment, shared exclusively with Business Insider. Some of the slides have been omitted or redacted.

Eikona's mission is to "end generic marketing."

Its cofounders come from AI research backgrounds, rather than marketing.

Eikona quotes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Eureka Labs founder Andrej Karpathy to explain how top thinkers in the space believe AI excels at persuasion and reinforcement learning.

Weingarten said that an age-old problem in digital marketing is determining which creative assets are working and why.

A/B testing is challenging to scale, and AI prompting can be susceptible to biases introduced by the person inputting the prompts, Eikona says.

Eikona blends AI with A/B testing, but replaces prompts with reinforcement learning — allowing the model to pursue the best results it can achieve.

Eikona employs a method called "reinforcement learning from human feedback," which means the process is automated but still involves a human in the loop to set guardrails and approve the final marketing materials.

Eikona is initially tackling the "lifecycle marketing" space, where companies use methods such as email and SMS to keep customers engaged at each stage of their interactions with a brand.

Lifecycle marketing represents a multibillion-dollar total addressable market, per Eikona.

Eikona has six clients and lining up plans to work with a further five in the coming quarter.

This slide illustrates how a large online travel agent implemented Eikona's algorithm in its promotional emails, resulting in a 20% increase in bookings versus the baseline.

• Uber's market penetration in the US is around 15%, CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah said Wednesday.
• The statistic shows how much room Uber has to grow in its home market, Mahendra-Rajah said.
• Uber sees suburbs and grocery delivery among its growth areas, he said.

Uber might seem ubiquitous in the US, but its CFO says the company has lots of room to grow.

Across the 10 largest countries where Uber operates, about 15% of adults use either Uber for ride-hailing or delivery, Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah said during a presentation at UBS' Global Technology and AI Conference on Wednesday. Uber and other consumer-focused companies often refer to this metric as "market penetration."

Uber's market penetration in the US "is right in line with that 15% average," Mahendra-Rajah said. That means that Uber has yet to reach many customers in the country where it was founded, he said.

To Uber investors, that number might seem small given how prevalent Uber has become in many parts of the country, Mahendra-Rajah said at the conference.

Indeed, for many people who live in large US cities and turn to the app for rides to the airport or meal delivery, using Uber — or a rival app, such as Lyft or DoorDash — has become a habit.

But not everyone in the US uses Uber so frequently — or at all, Mahendra-Rajah said.

Among Uber investors, "it's often a view of: 'There is no way I could use Uber anymore than I am, and there's no way my children can order Uber Eats more than they already do,'" he said.

"But you are really a unique case compared to the US average," he said. "That's why we remain very optimistic."

Uber has already built big businesses in ride-hailing and delivery. Still, there are multiple areas where it's trying to grow.

While many urbanites already use the app, Uber is also trying to get more users in the suburbs to turn to the app for rides to dinner or deliveries from Costco. Ride-hailing trips from suburbs — or "sparser markets," as Uber executives have called them — make up about 20% of Uber's total trips, Mahendra-Rajah said earlier this year.

Rural areas, where ride-hailing trips and delivery distances tend to be longer, have also been relatively recent focuses for the apps.

Uber Eats is also adding more supermarket chains and other retailers as partners to expand its delivery business, Mahendra-Rajah said on Wednesday.

Uber is also getting into the AI training business. Its AI Solutions arm has headhunted some white-collar workers with PhDs for gigs, such as its Project Sandbox — though it ended contracts for that project early, Business Insider reported last month.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Uber's November earnings call that the company's expansion into AI training is part of its aim to become a broader "platform for work."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at abitter@businessinsider.com or encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Jensen Huang appeared in a new episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" on Wednesday.
• The Nvidia CEO said that AI will create whole new job industries, particularly around making robots.
• You're gonna have a whole apparel industry for robots," he told Rogan.

Jensen Huang, the head of the world's most successful AI company, says the tech won't take your job, but it might create some strange new ones.

Many, including Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called "godfather of AI," have warned that AI's rapid evolution could trigger mass unemployment and deepen inequality.

In an episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" published on Wednesday, Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, took a more optimistic view, saying he thinks jobs that are greater than the sum of their tasks will survive.

"The question is, what is the job?" Huang said. "Your job has to be more than the task."

He pointed to radiologists as an example of a job that won't be superseded by AI.

AI can now scan images more efficiently than humans, yet the number of radiologists isn't shrinking, he said. The reason for that, according to Huang, is that the purpose of radiologists is to diagnose disease, not to study an image.

"The image studying is simply a task in service of diagnosing the disease," he said.

Huang acknowledged that purely task-based jobs will likely be replaced by automation, adding that it "could be a lot of people."

"If your job is just to chop vegetables, Cuisinart's [the kitchen gadget company] gonna replace you," he told Rogan.

However, the Nvidia CEO also predicted that entirely new industries and jobs will emerge as AI continues to develop, raising one of his big obsessions: robots.

When robots enter the mainstream, society will need "a whole new industry of technicians and people who have to manufacture the robots," Huang said, including one particularly unusual new job role.

"You're gonna have robot apparel … because I want my robot to look different than your robot, so you're gonna have a whole apparel industry for robots," Huang told Rogan while laughing.

When pressed by Rogan if he thought such jobs would be done by other robots, Huang added: "Eventually."

Huang's comments echo those of other CEOs who have said that the robot revolution will create whole new jobs previously unthought of.

In November, David Risher, CEO of ride-hailing firm Lyft, said that the rise of robotaxis could lead to the rise of the "car-tender."

"I think there will be fun things that people are going to be doing in the cars that are not just driving. It's making drinks, it's telling stories, it's being the local guy," Risher said on a podcast.

No one knows the ultimate goal of AI

In another segment of the podcast, Huang acknowledged that he doesn't know where the new technology he's racing to help develop will end up, or what AI's ultimate goal is.

"I don't think anybody really knows," Huang said. "I think it's probably going to be much more gradual than we think. It won't be a moment. It won't be as if somebody arrived and nobody else has."

Huang said that he was optimistic about where AI is headed. Historically, he said, society has always been wary of new technology, but those concerns tend to fuel progress rather than hinder it. In AI's case, he said, that caution is actively shaping safer, more reliable systems.

"If history is a guide, it is the case that all of this concern is channeled into making the technology safer," Huang said.

AI has developed to the point where it conducts research before answering, reflects on its responses, and utilizes tools to provide a better solution — all of which has helped reduce hallucinations, the Nvidia CEO said.

"If you look at what we're going to do with the next thousand times of performance in AI, a lot of it is going to be channeled toward more reflection, more research, thinking about the answer more deeply."

• 2025 has seen over 1.1 million job cuts in the US so far, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
• The firm said it was just the sixth time since 1993 that the figure had passed 1.1 million.
• It's also the most layoffs in a year since 2020, when the COVID pandemic upended the labor market.

This year has seen the most layoffs in the US since the pandemic, according to the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Employers have announced 1.17 million job cuts through November, a report published on Thursday showed.

It's just the sixth time since 1993 that this figure has exceeded 1.1 million.

2025 has seen the fifth-highest number of job cuts. The most were seen in 2020, when the labor market was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 marks the only time there were more than 2 million job cuts through November.

After 2020 and 2025, the worst years for job cuts in the past three decades were 2001, 2002, and 2009, when the financial crisis led to mass layoffs.

The report found US employers announced 71,321 job cuts in November — up 24% from the same period last year.

"Job cuts in November have risen above 70,000 only twice since 2008: in 2022 and in 2008," said Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The firm said that telecommunications companies cut the most jobs last month, at over 15,000, followed by some 12,000 layoffs in tech.