Your colleague suddenly vanishes from the team chat. There's no company-wide announcement, no headline-grabbing news. A week later, another desk empties. Welcome to the 'forever layoff' economy, where job cuts no longer arrive as seismic shocks but as a slow, unrelenting drip, reshaping how millions experience employment in 2025.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, US companies had cut 1,170,821 jobs by November this year — a 54% increase compared to the same period in 2024. This marks only the sixth time since 1993 that layoffs have exceeded 1.1 million at this point in the year. The only comparable years are 2001, 2002, 2003, 2009, and 2020, when economic downturns or crises prompted similar levels of redundancy.
But what makes 2025 particularly different isn't just the sheer volume of layoffs but their evolving shape. Glassdoor's 2026 Worklife Trends analysis highlights a structural shift away from rare, large-scale redundancies towards more frequent layoffs affecting smaller groups — often fewer than 50 employees at a time. These 'forever layoffs' now constitute a majority of job cuts in some sectors, with the share of smaller layoffs rising from 38% in 2015 to 51% in 2025.
Daniel Zhao, Chief Economist at Glassdoor, explains: 'The interesting thing that we saw in our research is that the shape of these layoffs is changing. Instead of these large one-off layoffs, we're seeing rolling layoffs and even some smaller layoffs as well.'
The impact on workers' mental health is tangible. Glassdoor's data on employee reviews shows mentions of 'layoffs' and 'job insecurity' in company ratings are now higher than they were in March 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers at the end of 2025 feel more anxious about losing their jobs than they did during the initial upheaval of a once-in-a-century health crisis.
Industries Under the Most Strain
The technology sector remains the hardest-hit. Challenger's data indicates that 153,536 jobs were cut in this industry by November — a 17% increase from last year. Artificial intelligence (AI) alone accounts for 54,694 layoffs in 2025, as companies automate routine tasks and reorganise teams around new tools. Since 2023, AI-related job cuts have been blamed for more than 70,000 redundancies.
Telecommunications has seen a dramatic surge, with 38,035 layoffs announced this year — a staggering 268% rise compared to 2024. Retailers have shed 91,954 jobs, up 139%, while service firms reported 69,089 layoffs, a 64% increase.
Implications for Careers and the Workplace Culture
The 'forever layoff' model offers employers greater flexibility and can help reduce severance costs. However, Glassdoor warns it fosters a 'slow-bleed culture' — where colleagues quietly disappear, workloads for remaining staff increase, and no one feels truly secure.
'It's keeping workers in suspense,' Zhao explains, '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.'
Job prospects remain bleak. Employers have announced just 497,151 planned new hires through November — a 35% decline from last year and the lowest year-to-date figure since 2010, according to Challenger. With hiring at a decade-low and serial layoffs becoming routine, many job seekers are accepting roles they would previously have rejected just to regain some stability.
Zhao notes that the rejection rate for jobs, as reflected in Glassdoor's data, has been declining for two years. 'Job seekers recognise that they don't have the leverage to negotiate.' As a result, more are settling for just any job, rather than the right one.
Trust in leadership continues to erode. Negative perceptions of senior executives have risen sharply since 2024, according to Glassdoor. For workers navigating this turbulent landscape, the message is clear: the era of chronic insecurity and 'doing more with less' shows no signs of easing in 2026.
