Photo by Razlan Hanafiah on Unsplash
We are living through a layoff crisis that rivals some of the darkest chapters in modern economic history.
According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers announced more than 1.17 million job cuts in the first eleven months of 2025 alone — a 54% increase over the same period in 2024, and the highest level since the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2026, the bleeding hasn’t stopped: tech layoff trackers report nearly 92,000 more tech workers affected in just the first quarter of this year.
The industries hit hardest? Technology leads the pack, with over 245,000 tech workers cut in 2025. Telecommunications, retail, media, aerospace, and consumer goods aren’t far behind. Verizon announced its largest-ever layoff campaign — more than 13,000 workers — the week before Thanksgiving. Amazon eliminated approximately 14,000 corporate roles. Target axed 1,800. Starbucks cut 1,100. Paramount slashed up to 3,000. The list goes on.
Of course, there are legitimate business reasons behind many of these decisions. Economic uncertainty, on-again/off-again tariffs, AI-driven restructuring, post-pandemic overcorrection — none of us gets to tell a company fighting for survival that it absolutely cannot reduce headcount. I get it.
But here’s what I will call out: The casual cruelty of how so many companies treat the people they kept.
Meet the Forgotten Workforce: The Survivors
When the layoffs end and the press releases go quiet, there’s a group of employees who rarely make the headlines. They’re still showing up every morning. They’re doing their jobs — and often someone else’s job too. They’re looking at the empty desks and the deactivated Slack handles and the meeting invites still bearing the names of colleagues who are gone.
These are the layoff survivors. And research tells us, unambiguously, that they are suffering.
The phenomenon has a clinical name: Survivor Syndrome (or Survivor’s Guilt). Columbia Business School professor Joel Brockner has studied layoff survivors for nearly four decades. His research consistently finds that survivors develop a troubling cocktail of emotions — anger, depression, fear, distrust, and guilt — after watching colleagues lose their jobs. The result, his work shows, is reduced productivity and creativity, increased absenteeism, and a higher risk of voluntary resignation.
Think about that last one. Companies lay people off to retain financial stability — and then watch even more people walk out the door voluntarily.
A 2025 survey by Careerminds found that over half of HR and procurement professionals cite low morale and a loss of trust in leadership as their top concerns following a layoff. And according to Lattice’s State of People Strategy Report, 74% of HR leaders say it takes anywhere from four months to over a year for employee morale and productivity to recover after a layoff. Meanwhile, 66% say their C-suite expects a full recovery in three months or less. That gap between leadership’s expectations and reality? That’s where survivors get crushed.
The Numbers Are Damning
If you need hard data to make the case to your leadership team, here it is:
- 74% of employees who kept their jobs say their own productivity declined after a layoff. (Leadership IQ)
- 69% say the quality of their company’s product or service declined following layoffs. (Leadership IQ)
- 64% say their colleagues’ productivity declined as well. (Leadership IQ)
- 77% of surviving workers report seeing more errors and mistakes being made. (Nectar/Leadership IQ)
- 70% of companies that conduct layoffs see a decline in employee morale in the first year. (Harvard Business School)
- 70% of layoff survivors admit their motivation dropped after the cuts. (eLearning Industry)
- 65% of employees at companies with recent layoffs now worry about job security, compared to just 24% at companies that haven’t had layoffs. (Nectar)
And the “forever layoffs” trend identified by Glassdoor makes this worse. Instead of one painful event that companies can address and recover from, many organizations have shifted to a steady drip of smaller, rolling cuts. Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao describes it as “keeping workers in suspense, where they’re constantly worried about their job security and they can’t focus on their work.” In fact, nearly a third of tech companies conducted at least two rounds of layoffs between 2023 and 2025 — and 70% of those repeat layoffs happened within 12 months of each other.
There is no “all-clear” signal. The anxiety never lifts. And companies are doing virtually nothing about it.
Don’t Mistake Fear for Loyalty: The “Job Hugging” Trap
Here’s some data that many corporate leaders are seeing right now that they’re totally misinterpreting: their turnover numbers look great.
After years of the Great Resignation, the pendulum has swung hard in the other direction. A new workplace trend called “job hugging” has taken hold — and it is exactly what it sounds like. According to Monster’s 2025 Job Hugging Report, 48% of currently employed U.S. workers say they’re staying in their current jobs longer than they otherwise would — not because they love their work, but for comfort, security, or stability. The voluntary quit rate has fallen to around 2% and held there — meaning roughly one million fewer Americans are leaving their jobs each month compared to the height of the pandemic.
To a CEO scanning a dashboard, that looks like a retention win. It isn’t.
Culture Amp researchers have a sharper name for it: a “talent jam.” Employees who would have left under normal circumstances are staying put — blocking internal mobility, stalling innovation, and quietly disengaging while their desks remain occupied. As Culture Amp puts it, job hugging produces surface-level stability that masks a deeper lack of engagement, growth, and motivation. Survivors aren’t staying because you’ve earned their loyalty. They’re staying because the job market feels too risky to leave. The quit rate is low because fear is high.
And that brings us back to you, corporate leadership. The demoralized, overburdened, guilt-ridden survivors sitting in your open-plan offices or punctually logging into work remotely? They’re not leaving right now — but not for the reasons you might hope. They’re waiting. And when the job market loosens, when hiring picks back up, the companies that neglected their survivors during the hard times will find out exactly how thin that “loyalty” was. The low turnover number you’re quietly celebrating is not a victory lap. It is a ticking clock.
Which makes what so many companies are doing next all the more baffling.
Adding Insult to Injury: Cutting Training and Coaching When Survivors Need It Most
Here is where I want to name what’s happening as more than a strategic error — I want to call it what it is: mean-spirited.
When companies lay people off, one of the first non-payroll budget lines to get slashed is Learning & Development. Training programs. Coaching. Leadership development. The very investments that could help overwhelmed, demoralized, grief-stricken employees adapt to their new reality.
According to the 2025 Training Industry Report, 16% of organizations decreased their training budgets in 2025, with more than 58% citing economic uncertainty as the reason. A separate survey by the Denver Training Group found that 14% of organizations cut L&D budgets, with over 70% citing economic concerns. And cuts went deeper than numbers: organizations reported reducing training staff, slashing outside consultant investment, and decreasing the number of learners served.
The consequence for survivors isn’t abstract. A 2025 survey of more than 1,000 U.S. workers who had experienced layoffs found that 65% of layoff survivors admit they’ve made costly mistakes or hesitated on critical decisions due to insufficient training. For Gen Z employees — your rising workforce — that number jumps to 77%. And yet only 27% of survivors report receiving any kind of structured re-onboarding support after a layoff.
Think about what’s actually happening here: Companies are handing survivors expanded job responsibilities, the institutional knowledge vacuum left by departing colleagues, and elevated emotional distress — and then simultaneously removing the coaching, training, and managerial development resources that would help them handle all of it.
As Eilert Hanoa, CEO of Kahoot!, put it: “Surviving a layoff doesn’t mean surviving the impact. When companies cut headcount without supporting those who remain, they are not just risking morale and employee engagement. They are risking mistakes, missed opportunities, and lost talent.”
The data backs this up: companies that invest in quality training experiences report 24% higher profit margins than those that don’t. LinkedIn’s research identifies learning opportunities as the top strategy for retaining employees. Careerminds found that organizations providing structured career transition support reported a 38% improvement in productivity among the remaining team.
So cutting training isn’t just cruel. It’s also financially irrational.
You Don’t Have to Be Mean to Cut Costs
Let me be direct: this newsletter is called Respectfully Resist because I believe you can push back on harmful norms without burning everything down. So let me be equally direct about what I’m not saying here.
I am not saying companies should never lay anyone off. I am not saying financial pressures aren’t real. I am not saying every organization that has conducted layoffs is villainous.
What I am saying is this: Being financially forced to make hard decisions does not give you license to stop caring about your people.
Survivors need to be told the truth about what happened and why. They need to hear an honest “all-clear” once the cuts are done — not vague platitudes about “exciting futures.” They need managers who are visible, approachable, and willing to acknowledge the grief in the room. They need structured re-onboarding to handle new responsibilities. And they need continued investment in their development — because that investment signals, in the clearest possible way, that the company values the humans who showed up.
Research from Leadership IQ found that employees who gave their managers high scores for visibility, approachability, and candor were 72% less likely to report a productivity decline and 65% less likely to report a decline in product or service quality following a layoff. That’s not a massive investment. That’s a management philosophy.
And nearly 70% of survivors in a BizReport survey said they received no support whatsoever from their employers after colleagues were let go.
Seventy percent.
The Bottom Line
If your company just went through layoffs — or is going through them now — the people who remain are watching. They’re watching how you treated the people who left. They’re watching whether leadership shows up with honesty or spin. And they’re watching whether you invest in helping them succeed or simply hand them more work and wish them luck.
The era of “you should be grateful you still have a job” management is not just cold — it is a documented path to lower productivity, more errors, higher voluntary turnover, and a culture that will take years to repair.
You made hard choices because you had to. Now make the right choices because you can.
Your survivors deserve that much.
Respectfully Resist is a newsletter about standing up for what’s right in the workplace — with facts, with heart, and without burning bridges. If this resonated with you, share it with a leader who needs to hear it.
P.S. — If This Resonates, There’s a Next Step
If you’re a leader, HR professional, or event planner wondering “what do we actually do about this?” — I’ve built a keynote specifically designed to answer that question.
After the Cut: How Smart Leaders Support, Retain, and Re-Energize the Employees Who Remain is a 45–85 minute session that gives leadership teams an honest, actionable roadmap for what to do after the RIF ends. It begins with what your people need most and get least — genuine acknowledgment — and charts a practical path forward through coaching, communication, and a series of neurological thought exercises that help audiences reframe their own emotions around layoffs and survivor guilt.
This is not a pep talk. It’s a strategic imperative.
If you’d like to explore bringing After the Cut to your organization or conference, I’d love to hear from you.
📧 Collective@RespectfulLeadership.org |
Sources: Challenger, Gray & Christmas (2025); TrueUp Tech Layoffs Tracker (2026); Careerminds Improving Career Transition Support Report (2025); Leadership IQ Survivor’s Guilt Study; Lattice State of People Strategy Report (2024); Harvard Business School (Sandra Sucher); Glassdoor 2026 Worklife Trends; HR Daily Advisor / Kahoot! Re-Onboarding Survey (2025); Training Magazine 2025 Industry Report; Denver Training Group (2025); Nectar HR Layoff Impact Survey; BizReport Survivor Support Survey; Fortune / Challenger, Gray & Christmas “Forever Layoffs” Report (December 2025).
