A shaky job market is shrinking job security in the corner office – notably in California.
My trusty spreadsheet found exits of chief executive officers were on the rise in a report by workplace consultants at Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Nationwide, 1,650 CEOs lost their jobs in the first nine months of 2025, Challenger reports. It’s part of a two-year upswing in corporations changing their top executives.
In the same period in 2024, 1,652 CEOs departed. Yet in the previous nine years, a median of 1,004 chief executives left their posts in the same time frame. This translates to 64% more changes for the big boss.
California is the top state for CEO exits in 2025, with 194 CEOs leaving their positions in nine months. Next came Texas at 132, North Carolina at 102, Florida at 98, and Pennsylvania at 75.
It’s worth noting that California is the nation’s largest economy. It’s got 18 million workers, more than any other state and 11% of the nation’s 159 million. Golden State businesses comprise 11% of the 500 companies that make up the high-profile S&P 500 stock index. And 13% of the INC. 5000 ranking of America’s fastest-growing companies hail from California.
So the state topping the CEO departure rankings isn’t a major surprise. Its 12% share of U.S. CEO exits is on par with its business clout.
Still, California’s CEO turnover increased by five in a year, ranking as the 12th largest increase nationally.
The biggest jump was in Texas at 28, then Georgia at 24, and Indiana at 18. The largest declines were in Massachusetts, down 26, Washington state, down 18, and North Carolina, down 17.
California’s slice of announced staffing cuts at major employers, also tracked by Challenger, is slightly larger.
California-centric layoff plans have hit 158,700 workers in the first 10 months of 2025, according to rankings that track layoffs based on either the corporate headquarters or the actual sites of the cuts, if mentioned in the layoff news release.
That’s the second-largest employment cut nationwide, accounting for 14% of the 1.1 million U.S. layoffs.
The national layoff hotspot was Washington, D.C., with 303,800. After California came New York, with 81,701, followed by Georgia with 78,049, and Washington state with 77,700. As for California’s economic rivals, Texas ranked seventh with 46,400 planned cuts, and Florida ranked ninth with 22,800 planned cuts.
California’s planned layoffs for 2025 increased 16% over the past year. Nationally, planned layoffs are up 4% in the same period.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com