Why 6 in 10 laid-off workers change careers, and how redeployment can keep that talent inside your business
Redundancy is no longer a one-off shock for most organisations. It has become a routine part of doing business, and most workers who lose their jobs are not returning to the same line of work.
That is the central finding of LHH's 2026 Career Pivot Report. The report analysed more than 418,000 people supported by the global career transition firm after losing their jobs, and found that 57.68 per cent moved into entirely new roles or careers in 2025.
The pressure on employers is not easing. LHH's 2026 Outplacement and Redeployment Report found that 87 per cent of HR leaders say their organisation has recently made layoffs or plans to within the next 12 months. More than three-quarters say layoffs are now routine rather than a one-off event.
For James McIlvena, managing director for Australia, New Zealand and Singapore at LHH, the data challenges a long-held assumption about what happens after a redundancy.
"People still assume it's just a case of, we need to separate for whatever the driving reason is. You're going to spend a little period of unemployment, but you'll be subsidised with your separation payment, and then we'll get you some support, and then you'll be back into a similar role," he told HRD.
"But very few people understand the changing face of the job market and how many people are needing to look at doing something differently and use that period differently to what they have in the past."
Why most laid-off workers aren't going back
The pivot rate has been steady. Between 56 and 58 per cent of displaced workers in LHH's data have moved into a different occupation every year since 2022, despite major economic and technological upheaval.
Some roles are far more exposed than others. In customer operations, 90.15 per cent of LHH-supported candidates moved into a different occupation, and only 9.85 per cent returned to the same function.
The most common destinations were sales, supply chain and operations coordination roles. Even among the 63,000 software developers LHH has supported over two years, around 35 per cent moved into different functions or industries.
Australia sits slightly above the global average. Its career pivot rate was 60.8 per cent in the first half of 2025, compared with 57.7 per cent globally. Germany had the highest rate at 70.9 per cent and India the lowest at 54.1 per cent.
McIlvena said pivoting is often a necessity rather than a choice.
"A perfect example is things like call centre roles that are decreasing in the number that you have for a range of different reasons, whether that's for offshoring or whether that's because of automation," he said.
"And so that career pivot becomes essential to ending up in a new role. Otherwise, they're likely to have a really extended period of unemployment."
In Australia, moves such as Woolworths' decision to offshore HR, IT and finance roles and Telstra's latest restructure flagging hundreds of job cuts have kept large redundancy programs in the headlines. McIlvena said the bigger shift is less visible.
"It's not just the large ones that hit the media headlines like the Woolworths ones. It is also just a higher rate of people generally being made redundant," he said.
The hidden AI cost behind redundancy decisions
The reasons for layoffs have also changed. In 2025, HR leaders most often cited over-hiring in previous years (30 per cent). In 2026, the drivers are spread more evenly: artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (21 per cent), skills mismatches (21 per cent), and mergers and acquisitions (20 per cent). This echoes US hiring managers expecting AI and reorganisation to drive layoffs this year.
McIlvena said AI-related redundancies are often misunderstood.
"One is the roles that are actually replaced by automation or an agent. The other is the roles that are displaced because they're looking to save money to reinvest into adoption of AI, pay for tokens," he said.
"I think all roles can potentially be impacted, particularly when it's to take cost out of the salary line in the P&L."
Why redeployment is cheaper than rehiring
The business case for keeping people is strong. McIlvena said 73 per cent of organisations report that rehiring costs more than redeploying existing talent. Yet only 19 per cent of employees entering LHH's placement programs believe their employer made a meaningful effort to redeploy them before they left.
Part of the problem is timing. Formal redeployment usually happens only between notification and exit.
"The average is around 6 to 9 weeks depending on seniority of the role. And that's just not enough time," McIlvena said. He argued employers should instead think in terms of career mobility, which starts well before any role is at risk.
Workers are anxious and under-informed. LHH found that 51 per cent are worried about being laid off and 57 per cent believe leadership lacks a long-term skills strategy. Only 15 to 20 per cent are aware of the redeployment, training, coaching or mentoring opportunities available to them. Separate Adecco Group research found that 61 per cent of organisations struggle to move workers into new roles.
What HR leaders should do now
McIlvena said upskilling is the most practical starting point, because full reskilling is expensive.
"Reskilling is very costly when it comes to putting together a really comprehensive reskilling program that's going to work," he said.
He outlined three low-cost steps:
- Clearly tell all employees which skills the organisation will value in future
- Point staff to learning resources the organisation already pays for, such as LinkedIn Learning or Udemy libraries attached to its learning management system, which he said are often underused
- Explain why the effort will pay off for the employee
"What the data shows is that employees are willing to do this, but they won't do it if they can't see the path forward," he said.
LHH's report also urges leaders to:
- Build career transition support into the whole employee journey, not just exit
- Assign a clear owner for internal mobility
- Equip managers to hold regular career conversations
McIlvena said the barrier is smaller than many HR teams fear.
"Sometimes that hurdle of thinking it's going to be too difficult or way too expensive to mobilise people internally, it's not as big a hurdle as they think," he said. "There's also a lot of things they already have, and it's more a mindset shift than a big capital investment."
