The ‘forever layoffs’ era hits a recession trigger as corporates sack 1.1 million workers through November

Technology remains the hardest-hit private sector industry, with more than 150,000 job cuts announced so far this year as firms continue to reset headcount after the boom years while they increasingly lean into automation. Telecom providers, food companies, services firms, retailers, nonprofits, and media organizations are all shedding workers as well, in many cases at double- or triple-digit percentage increases over last year.

Specifically, U.S.-based employers announced 1,170,821 job cuts in the first 11 months of 2025, up 54% from the same period in 2024. That makes 2025 one of only six years since 1993 in which announced layoffs through November have topped 1.1 million, putting it in the company of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2009, and the pandemic shock of 2020. November alone saw 71,321 cuts, the highest for that month since 2022 and well above typical pre-pandemic November levels.

Daniel Zhao, chief economist for Glassdoor, noted in an interview with Fortune that this actually understates the typical, true number of layoffs, citing federal data from the JOLTS survey that roughly 1.7 million people had been laid off over the same period. “The interesting thing that we saw in our research is that the shape of these layoffs is changing,” he said. “So instead of these large one-off layoffs, we’re seeing rolling layoffs and even some smaller layoffs as well.”

The “rolling layoff” must be considered amid the many conflicting signals of the economy of 2025, when “affordability” politics emerged to reflect mass unrest among vulnerable workers. Fears of a bubble in artificial intelligence have coincided with worker anxiety and Gen Z despair over an elevated unemployment rate and a dearth of entry-level positions.

Earnings reports increasingly reveal, as many executives call it, a “bifurcated” or “K-shaped” economy, used to describe the different trajectories of rich and poor. The wealthier cohort is spending freely, with the upper 10% accounting for nearly 50% of consumer spending (and absorbing elevated costs passed through from tariffs), while the lower-income consumer shows increasing signs of strain. Morgan Stanley analyst Mike Wilson believes a “rolling recession” was tearing through different sectors of the economy and that, from April onward, a “rolling recovery” has been underway in 2025.

Analysts at both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Research have noted that this recovery is a financial one, reflected in stock prices and soaring profits—and increasingly in fewer workers required in white-collar positions. The era of “jobless growth” and process over people is emerging into view, thanks to the forever layoff.

Inside the ‘forever layoff’ model

Glassdoor’s 2026 Worklife Trends analysis describes a structural shift away from rare, large-scale reductions toward frequent layoffs affecting fewer than 50 workers at a time. These “forever layoffs” now account for a majority of cuts in some data, with the share of small layoffs rising from well under half in the mid-2010s to more than half by 2025. The new model allows leaders to continuously adjust headcount in response to markets and AI adoption without the reputational and morale shock of a single blockbuster layoff event.

Consultants say rolling layoffs give executives maximum flexibility and can lower severance and restructuring costs, while keeping operations running by redistributing work slowly instead of wiping out entire teams overnight. But what looks efficient on paper, Glassdoor warns, creates a slow-bleed culture in which coworkers quietly disappear, workloads creep up for survivors, and no one ever feels truly safe in their role.

Zhao described it as “keeping workers in suspense, where they’re constantly worried about their job security and they can’t focus on their work.” Even though these forever layoffs might sneak under the radar and not generate quite as many downbeat headlines, “people internally know what’s up; they’re going to recognize what’s happening.” Ultimately, he said he believes it has a really negative impact on culture and morale and hence productivity.

Zhao cited the job-rejection rate that appears in Glassdoor data, which has been declining for two years. “I think what’s going on there is job seekers recognize that they don’t have the leverage to negotiate, as much leverage to negotiate on an offer, or they don’t feel confident in their ability to find a better offer elsewhere.” The end result is more people “settling” for just any job, not the right job.

Glassdoor’s review data shows employee mentions of “layoffs” and “job insecurity” in company ratings are now higher than they were in March 2020, when the pandemic first shut down the global economy. That suggests workers in late 2025 feel more anxious about losing their jobs than they did at the onset of a once-in-a-century public health crisis. Trust in senior leadership has eroded as well, with negative descriptions of executives—such as “misaligned” or “hypocritical”—rising sharply since 2024.

Hiring plans are not offsetting the damage. Through November, per the Challenger report, employers have announced 497,151 planned hires, down 35% from the same point last year and the lowest year-to-date total since 2010. With hiring at a decade low and serial layoffs becoming normalized, many job seekers are taking roles they would once have rejected simply to regain a foothold in a less forgiving market.

Zhao pushed back on the idea of a “jobs recession,” although he acknowledged that hiring has been “very sluggish” for much of the past two years and there is some evidence of job growth slowing significantly and reaching negative territory, including some months with job losses.

“I think you would want to see more evidence before declaring an actual jobs recession,” he said. “A month here and there of negative jobs growth is not good, but we don’t want to declare a new trend based on just a month or two’s worth of data.”

AI, restructurings, and the new power balance

Behind the cuts, a cluster of forces is reshaping corporate staffing decisions. Challenger’s report shows restructuring, business unit closures, and market or economic conditions have driven the bulk of 2025 layoffs, with tens of thousands of jobs also explicitly tied to AI adoption. Since 2023, employers have blamed artificial intelligence for more than 70,000 announced job cuts as they automate routine work and reorganize teams around new tools.​

Glassdoor’s analysts say this environment has shifted bargaining power back to employers after several years when workers could demand flexibility, higher pay, and faster advancement. Remote and hybrid staff now report declining career opportunity ratings as promotions increasingly favor in-office employees, forcing many to trade flexibility for perceived security.

Combined with the drumbeat of forever layoffs, those tradeoffs are ushering in a workplace defined less by pandemic-era empowerment than by chronic insecurity and a “do more with less” mandate that shows no sign of easing in 2026.

The squeeze is showing up not just in corporate restructuring plans, but also in real-time payroll data. ADP’s November report, released Wednesday, found private employers shed 32,000 jobs last month—but nearly all of the losses came from small businesses, which cut 120,000 positions, while large corporations actually added 90,000 workers.

ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, in the report, called the decline “broad-based,” but emphasized that small firms with limited cash flow and thin margins “are really weathering an uncertain macro environment and a cautious consumer.” Small employers have faced rising operating costs from tariffs, utility bills, and a Fed hesitant to cut rates, a burden that larger companies have been far better positioned to absorb.

The divergence underscores the widening K-shape in the labor market. White-collar and corporate jobs are being trimmed through rolling, under-the-radar layoffs, while small businesses are facing outright contraction as they struggle with tariffs, higher utility bills, and softer consumer demand. Small firms are almost always the first to lay off workers in a downturn because they feel the pullback in spending sooner and have far less room to absorb rising input costs, Richardson told Axios. Larger companies have the cash flow, scale, and financing to wait out uncertainty, even as they quietly restructure teams, but small employers simply run out of margin.

However, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, blamed the data on the “Democrat shutdown,” rather than tariffs, during an interview on CNBC. The cabinet secretary also said those figures will “rebalance and they’ll regrow,” claiming “this is just a near-term event.”

Zhao said he thinks the forever layoffs are contributing to the “malaise” that workers feel about the economy of 2025. “There’s a significant amount of uncertainty and anxiety that workers are feeling around job security and the risk that another layoff might be coming in just a month or two.” It means, he added, that “workers are constantly on edge.”