In the back half of June, Lucid announced its decision to cut 18% of its workforce across the board. This, paired with the planned shutdown of a Phoenix pharmacy operation, resulted in over 1,100 Arizona workers expected to lose their jobs. So what does the Arizona job landscape look like?
Dale Rogers, professor at Arizona State’s W. P. Carey School of Business, joined “Arizona Horizon” to answer that question.
Rogers detailed how policy changes at the border have impacted the Arizona job landscape.
“We’ve had big policy changes about the border, and while we’re seeing way fewer illegal aliens come across the border, we’re also seeing a reduction in business services and products flowing. And now we may be getting out of the USMCA, which that’ll probably make it worse even more down at the border,” Rogers said.
Rogers explained that the sector facing the most layoffs is government.
“Where we’ve seen the largest degradation in jobs is in government, where last month we lost 10,000-some government jobs. That’s still some of the stuff from DOGE. It’s also the sort of restructuring of both the state government and the federal government,” Rogers said.
Rogers provided a grim outlook for the nationwide economy.
“I think it’s going to be a tough fourth quarter. I think it’s going to be a tough fourth quarter. I think that we’re headed into a period of great uncertainty. And you know, some of my colleagues, someone just sent me a thing about temporary labor the last few months and that it’s a sign of a recession. I’m not willing to say that yet, but there are some things that make you nervous,” Rogers said.
