When hundreds or thousands of people lose their job in a traditional mass layoff, it’s a huge loss ― but at least losing your job in this way provides a clear ending that allows you to move on with your life.
But nowadays, you could be spared from one layoff and lose your job a few months later in the next.
According to a new Glassdoor report, we are in the depressing era of the “forever layoff” or “rolling layoffs,” where companies conduct multiple less-visible firings in “never-ending waves.”
In its analysis of company announcements, Glassdoor researchers found that layoffs of less than 50 people are now the most popular type of layoff in 2025, making up 51% of WARN Act notices ― a legal notice that requires companies to disclose layoff numbers over a certain number ― compared with only 38% in 2015.
“The job market is still cooling, and as businesses look to continue to cut costs and cut workers, we do expect this [forever layoff] trend that we’ve seen over the last few years to continue,” said Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist. He said employers who do this “might be trying to avoid the negative press that comes with one large layoff.“
Melanie Ehrenkranz, who interviews workers for her substack Laid Off, said she is hearing more often about this kind of “solitary layoff.”
“In the Laid Off community, I’m definitely talking to more people who were let go in ones and twos – sometimes alongside a couple peers, and sometimes totally alone,” Ehrenkranz said. “One of my recent interviews was with IndieWire’s senior social and culture editor. Their parent company had been doing rolling layoffs throughout the year, but when it came time for him to be let go, it was just him and maybe a few others.”
Ehrenkranz said mass layoffs are still happening this year, but there could be a strategic element to the smaller rolling layoff: “If a company can avoid making headlines or becoming the next viral LinkedIn post, they will.”
Sandra Sucher, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who has researched layoffs, doesn’t think companies do rolling layoffs to avoid the headlines over WARN Act notices. She thinks it’s due to the uncertainty over tariffs and the eventual promise of artificial intelligence taking away jobs.
“People are just having a hard time trying to estimate, well, how many people do I need to do this work when the nature of the work itself appears to be changing,” Sucher said.
Why Rolling Layoffs Are Uniquely Dreadful And Bad For Everyone
No matter if you go through a mass layoff or a smaller rolling layoff, Sucher said that “all layoffs are inhumane” because you are “taking away someone’s ability to support themselves.”
But rolling layoffs are uniquely awful because you lose the community of colleagues who know what you are going through. “You don’t have a cohort of 20 or 100 or 1,000 coworkers to commiserate with, compare notes with, or even make sense of what happened. You lose transparency,” Ehrenkranz said.
And rolling layoffs take a long-term toll on the anxious workforce left behind. “One cost which is truly hidden is a reduction in voluntary effort,” Sucher said. “So people who went above and beyond....that goes away.”
People also become less innovative “and unwilling to stick their necks out and do things that are new, because that could put them at risk if that doesn’t pan out,” Sucher said. To mitigate these side effects, companies would need to give “strong re-employment support” to help those who are being laid off, she said.
Ironically, businesses keep “pursuing these kinds of ongoing layoffs... officially in the name of productivity and efficiency, but if you keep doing it this way, workers are going to get less productive and less efficient because of the anxiety and uncertainty they feel,” Zhao said.
A layoff is one of the most destabilizing life events you can go through in your career. It’s normal if you are never quite the same after you lose your job.
Take what happened to San Francisco resident Laura Holland, who is already a layoff veteran at just 25 years old. In 2023, the tech professional was one of thousands who got laid off from Google, and this year, she lost her Department of Justice paralegal job due to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency cuts. Holland is currently a dog walker and pet sitter, and also coaches youth basketball while she job hunts for full-time work.
Her layoff experiences have reset her expectations with corporate America. “It feels like I don’t have any friends who haven’t been laid off,” she said. “When you’re a young person in your 20s working at this big corporation ― we’re the first to go. So Gen Z has been probably impacted the hardest.”
“I now no longer put as much value and emphasis on the company I work for or my job title, that doesn’t define who I am,” she continued. “When you get so wrapped up in your job, and you become so passionate about where you work, I think that can create an unhealthy dynamic, especially amidst layoffs. “
Holland is now focusing on being an online content creator.
“I don’t know if I even want to go back to the corporate world, because it hasn’t done very much for me professionally. It’s good experience, but I haven’t felt at all fulfilled or supported,” she said. “With the forever layoffs, I’m definitely focusing more on investing in myself ― like, I can’t be laid off from my TikTok.”