US employers axed about 153,000 workers last month — making it the worst October for layoffs in two decades and bringing total firings for the year so far to over 1 million, according to a new report that noted many companies blamed the latest layoffs on AI.

The last time the US saw a worse October in terms of firings was in 2003, when 171,874 people were laid off.

As in the aughts, the latest layoff numbers came amid a time of tech-driven realignment for the economy. Back then, the issue was changes in the telecom industry sparked by the rise of cell phones, experts say; today, it’s the advent of AI and automating tasks once done by humans.

Companies cited artificial intelligence in 31,039 of the October layoffs — second only to general cost-cutting — according to the report Challeng

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