the.com/layoff
A corporate magic trick where the workers vanish and the executive bonuses appear.
means A layoff is the termination of employment for one or more workers, usually because a company is cutting costs or has no work for them, rather than because of anything they did wrong.
from A straightforward English compound of "lay" plus "off" — the same "lay" you find in "lay down" or "lay aside," meaning to set something out of the way. The phrasal verb "lay off" originally just meant to stop or desist (as in "lay off the cake"), and by the 19th century it had taken on the industrial sense of suspending workers, often temporarily during slow seasons. The noun "layoff," the act of being set aside from one's work, followed naturally — and over time the "temporary" politely fell off, leaving only the off.
- euphemism factory
- Spawned 'rightsizing,' 'workforce optimization,' and 'restructuring.'
- stock bump
- Share prices often rise the day cuts announced.
- survivor syndrome
- Remaining staff report guilt, anxiety, and falling productivity.
- friday tradition
- Often timed late week to limit office reaction.
- origin
- Word predates jobs, once meant a break from work.
twitter mass layoff 2022 — elon musk fired 50% of twitter's 7,500 employees after acquisition
tech industry layoffs 2023 — meta, amazon, google cut 300,000+ jobs collectively in 2022-2023