Look out below, because the dam is beginning to break.  Many of us were projecting that our economic problems would accelerate during the early portion of 2026, and that is precisely what has taken place.  Employers are conducting brutal layoffs all over the nation, the number of job openings continues to decline, stores and restaurants are closing everywhere we look, and now cryptocurrencies are crashing hard.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and the worst is yet to come.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, so far in 2026 the number of announced layoffs is the highest that we have seen since 2009…

Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.

The report, from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, mirrored other data released Feb. 5 that suggested the labor market is cooling. Unemployment benefits claims rose in the most recent week, and job openings slipped in December.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger said in a release accompanying his firm’s report.

We didn’t even experience a January this bad during the pandemic.

Large companies are ruthlessly swinging the axe, and white collar workers are being hit particularly hard.

And the fact that new applications for unemployment benefits are rising seems to confirm that the employment market is rapidly moving in the wrong direction…

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Those that have been laid off are discovering that it is not easy to find a new job in this very harsh environment.

According to ABC News, the number of available job openings has dropped to the lowest level in over five years…

U.S. job openings fell to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December — from 6.9 million in November and the fewest since September 2020.

That sounds like a lot of job openings, but one recent study found that about a third of all job postings aren’t actually real.

And most of the jobs that are actually available aren’t good paying jobs.

These days, employers can be flooded with thousands of resumes for a single good paying job.

AI has been replacing white collar workers on a massive scale and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Could it be possible that many of us will soon end up working for AI?

There is now a website where AI entities can hire humans to perform physical tasks for them…

The machines aren’t just coming for your jobs. Now, they want your bodies as well.

That’s at least the hope of Alexander Liteplo, a software engineer and founder of RentAHuman.ai, a platform for AI agents to “search, book, and pay humans for physical-world tasks.”

When Liteplo launched RentAHuman on Monday, he boasted that he already had over 130 people listed on the platform, including an OnlyFans model and the CEO of an AI startup, a claim which couldn’t be verified. Two days later, the site boasted over 73,000 rentable meatwads, though only 83 profiles were visible to us on its “browse humans” tab, Liteplo included.

That sounds absolutely crazy.

But this is the world that we live in now.

Yesterday, I posted an article entitled “Deep Cuts: We Are Witnessing A Tsunami Of Very Painful Layoffs And Closings In 2026”, and now we have learned that another major chain is planning widespread closures.

Pizza Hut was once the most dominant pizza chain in the entire country, but now it intends to close somewhere around 250 more locations…

Pizza Hut will close about 250 locations in the U.S. through June as its parent company, Yum! Brands, moves to shut underperforming stores and reassess the brand’s long-term strategy, executives said.

Yum! Brands Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy said during an earnings call that the closures will primarily target weaker-performing Pizza Hut restaurants as part of a broader effort to modernize the chain.

The closures are tied to the company’s “Hut Forward” initiative aimed at refreshing Pizza Hut’s marketing, updating its restaurant model and improving franchise performance. Yum! said it is also reviewing broader strategic options for Pizza Hut, signaling the changes could be part of a deeper reset for the brand.

My parents would often take me to Pizza Hut when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed their pizza in those days.

So this is very sad news for me.

Of course it isn’t just the real economy that is crashing.

Cryptocurrencies are crashing too…

Digital assets, including bitcoin, have fallen deeper into the red as investors re-assess the practical utility of a token that has been championed not only as a hedge against inflation and macroeconomic uncertainties but also as an alternative to fiat currencies and traditional safe-havens such as gold.

That hasn’t panned out lately, since bitcoin peaked just north of $126,000 in early October.

On Thursday, bitcoin was last down to $67,675, its lowest since since November 2024. The cryptocurrency broke below $70,000 earlier in the session Thursday and then the selling increased. The cryptocurrency is down 20% this week alone.

We are witnessing a mad dash for the exits.

Overall, Bitcoin is now down more than 40 percent from last October’s peak…

Bitcoin is acting weird.

The world’s most famous cryptocurrency has tumbled 44% from its October peak, falling below $70,000 Thursday for the first time in 15 months.

That decline is actually not unusual at all. Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it’s gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one.

What’s strange is this: Bitcoin’s four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it.

As I write this article, the price of Bitcoin is sitting at $65,187.99.

Once it falls to $63,000 that will represent a 50 percent decline from last October.

Other major cryptocurrencies have experienced even larger crashes.

Needless to say, a lot of investors that got into cryptocurrencies recently are being wiped out.

We are also seeing turmoil in the stock market, bond prices are going nuts, and prices for precious metals have been flying all over the place.

In so many ways, what we are witnessing reminds me so much of the Great Recession.

The CFO of General Motors appears to be quite pessimistic as well, because he is saying that a major economic downturn is inevitably coming…

General Motors Co. is strategizing for an inevitable economic downturn by paring down dealer inventory and maintaining a cash safety net, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said Wednesday.

Jacobson’s comments to a panel of auto insiders at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank’s Detroit branch provide insight into industry leaders’ expectations for the broader economy, as well as reassurance that the Detroit company is taking steps to remain resilient in tougher times.

We all knew that this was going to happen.

It was just a matter of time.

The party wasn’t going to last forever.

Anyone that thought that was just being delusional.

Now a time of reckoning is upon us, and the pain that our society is about to experience will be absolutely excruciating.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.