Companies are spreading job cuts over months instead of announcing them all at once. Experts say the toll adds up
Companies used to save their layoffs for a single, painful day. Now more of them are stretching that pain out, cutting small groups of workers every few months instead of making one large cut and moving on. Some call it the drip, drip, drip approach. Others have started calling it the era of forever layoffs.
Microsoft illustrates the pattern well. The company laid off around 9,000 employees in mid-2025, then cut another 4,800 roles in July 2026, even as it forecast record spending on AI infrastructure. Cisco and Cloudflare have followed a similar script this year, Cisco cutting nearly 4,000 jobs amid further AI investment and Cloudflare trimming about 20 percent of its workforce, both while reporting record revenue.
Wayne Cascio, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Denver and author of Responsible Restructuring, said the pattern varies by industry.
"What we're seeing really varies by industry and by sector," Cascio said. "We're seeing a lot of AI instituted layoffs in high tech. But the biggest thing is that the economic logic that underlies layoffs is pretty compelling."
The economic logic behind the cuts
That logic comes down to a basic question every business eventually asks.
"There are only two ways to make money in business," Cascio said. "You either cut costs or you grow your revenues. And if you think about what's more predictable, your future costs or your future revenues, obviously it's your future costs. Salaries are fixed costs, and those are an attractive target when times get tough."
But whether spreading those cuts out over time actually pays off financially is a different question.
"My research is very clear about this," Cascio said. "We followed S&P 500 companies for up to two years after layoffs, and if all they do is cut people and don't change anything else, they never outperform their competitors. Other studies have followed firms as long as nine years after layoffs, and the conclusion is the same."
Joel Brockner, professor of business at Columbia Business School, has studied the psychology of downsizing for decades, focusing on the people who stay rather than the ones who leave. He said the recurring pattern often comes down to leaders hoping one round of cuts will solve the problem for good, only to find out later that it didn't.
"They're hoping, and I'd say it's a little bit of wishful thinking," Brockner said. "It might explain why they have to do repeated layoffs, that they were hoping this would be enough, but it ended up not being enough."
What happens to the people who stay
Brockner calls this drip, drip, drip of repeated layoffs. He says the anecdotal evidence and behavioral theory both point the same way. Doing it all at once takes a lighter toll on the people who remain than smaller repeated layoffs do.
"There's more anecdotal evidence, and certainly good theory, to suggest that if you have to do it, far better, or the lesser of two evils, is to do it all at once rather than smaller repeated layoffs," Brockner said.
That theory traces back to research on how people weigh losses.
"There is something about just the mere presence of an additional layoff that has almost an outsize effect in people's minds," Brockner said. "This comes from the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They said famously that losses loom larger than gains."
Brockner has spent much of his career studying survivor syndrome, the toll on employees who remain after a layoff, a phenomenon HRD has reported extensively on. He said a rolling cadence compounds it.
"One of my pet peeves is when organizations refer to the people who are losing their jobs as the affected employees, the implication being that those who remain are not affected," Brockner said. "It's not nothing. On average, people who remain are demoralized, demotivated, and show low productivity and low morale for three or four months after a substantial layoff."
Cascio sees the same pattern in retention and employer branding.
"Morale is the first casualty in a downsizing," he said. "Think about what it would be like to work at a place where you have these forever layoffs coming every year. Would you want to work there? The number one feature that Generation Z wants in an employer is employment security."
Trust is hard to win back
Trust is hard to rebuild while cuts are still happening. Leaders who fail to explain their reasoning risk the kind of hollow words and lack of accountability HRD has warned against in past coverage of layoff communication.
"Being trustworthy follows from explaining why the layoffs were necessary and communicating in a dignified and respectful manner," Brockner said. "If organizations can provide a package of sorts to soften the blow, it's not only the people who receive it who appreciate it, but those who remain as well."
Brockner said the work does not end once the cuts themselves are over.
"Over the longer term, there's a need for leaders to show that there's opportunity going forward and give people a sense of control," Brockner said.
Cascio said the toll on loyalty hits hardest with the employees companies can least afford to lose.
"High performers will always have options, no matter what the economy is doing. Those are your A players, the ones you least want to lose. But when they feel like they have the sword of Damocles hanging over them every year, that doesn't inspire long term retention or loyalty in any way," he said.
A better way forward
If rolling layoffs cost companies the people they can least afford to lose, the fix starts before the next round gets planned. Cascio said the math rarely works out once turnover and lost institutional knowledge are factored in.
"These people have institutional memory," Cascio said. "They know how to get things done in their organizations, and you can't automate all of that."
He points to companies that treat headcount as an investment rather than a lever to pull.
"I was listening to the chief HR officer at Johnson and Johnson, and he said they have an investment model when it comes to people," Cascio said. "They tell people they'll do everything they can to keep their skills current and employable. If you don't want to take advantage of that, they'll offer you severance. If you do, there are lots of opportunities. That's a model that makes good sense to me."
The practical takeaway comes down to three steps. Invest in the people already on the payroll, communicate honestly when cuts are unavoidable, and treat layoffs as a last resort rather than a first one.
