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.