Layoffs: A Recent Trend

Naina Sehta; Sumit Babasaheb Gagare; Ashish Jadhav

Abstract

In India as well as other parts of the world, layoffs—the termination of a group of employees’ employment for a variety of reasons, including restructuring, downsizing, or economic downturn—have become a regular occurrence. Layoffs have been especially common in the manufacturing, financial, and technology industries in recent years. The employment market appears to be swinging from crisis to crisis because of the growing rate at which one crisis is following another. We are all at risk from these many crises and the resulting ongoing pressures. While the impacts are more severe for the most vulnerable among us (young people, immigrants, and the impoverished), there is a great deal of uncertainty for everyone. COVID-19 served as a perfect example of this, impacting everyone while also solidifying some disparities between those who were more severely impacted and those who have never been. The tech sector was rocked by a large layoff wave, resulting in the termination of over 120,000 IT employees only in the United States. In recent years, India has seen many instances of high-profile layoffs. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 caused a significant rise in layoffs in a number of sectors, including retail, hospitality, and aviation. This exploratory study seeks knowledge related to company layoffs, as well as the names of companies that have recently laid off workers, the reasons for the layoffs, and the impacts of the layoffs. Applying secondary data, information regarding the layoffs is collected.