Technology remains the hardest-hit private-sector industry, with more than 150,000 job cuts announced so far this year as firms continue to reset headcount after the boom years while they increasingly lean into automation. Telecom providers, food companies, services firms, retailers, nonprofits and media organizations are all shedding workers as well, in many cases at double- or triple-digit percentage increases over last year.

Specifically, U.S.-based employers announced 1,170,821 job cuts in the first 11 months of 2025, up 54% from the same period in 2024. That makes 2025 one of only six years since 1993 in which announced layoffs through November have topped 1.1 million, putting it in the company of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2009 and the pandemic shock of 2020. November alone saw 71,321 cuts, the highest for that month since 2022 and well above typical pre-pandemic November levels.

Daniel Zhao, chief economist for Glassdoor, noted in an interview with Fortune that this actually understates the typical, true number of layoffs, citing federal data from the JOLTS survey that roughly 1.7 million people had been laid off over the same period. “The interesting thing that we saw in our research is that the shape of these layoffs is changing,” he said. “So instead of these large one-off layoffs, we’re seeing rolling layoffs and even some smaller layoffs as well.”

The “rolling layoff” must be considered amid the many conflicting signals of the economy of 2025, when “affordability” politics emerged to reflect mass unrest among vulnerable workers. Fears of a bubble in artificial intelligence have coincided with worker anxiety and Gen Z despair over an elevated unemployment rate and a dearth of entry-level positions.

Earnings reports increasingly reveal, as many executives call it, a “bifurcated” or “K-shaped” economy, used to describe the different trajectories of rich and poor. The wealthier cohort is spending freely, with the upper 10% accounting for nearly 50% of consumer spending (and absorbing elevated costs passed through from tariffs), while the lower-income consumer shows increasing signs of strain. Morgan Stanley analyst Mike Wilson believes a “rolling recession” was tearing through different sectors of the economy and that, from April onward, a “rolling recovery” has been underway in 2025.

Analysts at both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Research have noted that this recovery is a financial one, reflected in stock prices and soaring profits—and increasingly in less workers required in white-collar positions. The era of “jobless growth” and process over people is emerging into view, thanks to the forever layoff.

Inside the ‘forever layoff’ model

Glassdoor’s 2026 Worklife Trends analysis describes a structural shift away from rare, large-scale reductions toward frequent layoffs affecting fewer than 50 workers at a time. These “forever layoffs” now account for a majority of cuts in some data, with the share of small layoffs rising from well under half in the mid-2010s to more than half by 2025. The new model allows leaders to continuously adjust headcount in response to markets and AI adoption without the reputational and morale shock of a single blockbuster layoff event.

Consultants say rolling layoffs give executives maximum flexibility and can lower severance and restructuring costs, while keeping operations running by redistributing work slowly instead of wiping out entire teams overnight. But what looks efficient on paper, Glassdoor warns, creates a slow bleed culture in which coworkers quietly disappear, workloads creep up for survivors and no one ever feels truly safe in their role.

Zhao described it as “keeping workers in suspense, where they’re constantly worried about their job security and they can’t focus on their work.” Even though these forever layoffs might sneak under the radar and not generate quite as many negative headlines, “people internally know what’s up, they’re going to recognize what’s happening.” Ultimately, he said he believes it has a really negative impact on culture and morale and hence productivity.

Zhao cited the job-rejection rate that appears in Glassdoor data, which has been declining for two years. “I think what’s going on there is job seekers recognize that they don’t have the leverage to negotiate, as much leverage to negotiate on an offer, or they don’t feel confident in their ability to find a better offer elsewhere.” The end result is more people “settling” for just any job, not the right job.

Glassdoor’s review data shows employee mentions of “layoffs” and “job insecurity” in company ratings are now higher than they were in March 2020, when the pandemic first shut down the global economy. That suggests workers in late 2025 feel more anxious about losing their jobs than they did at the onset of a once-in-a-century public-health crisis. Trust in senior leadership has eroded as well, with negative descriptions of executives—such as “misaligned” or “hypocritical”—rising sharply since 2024.

Hiring plans are not offsetting the damage. Through November, per the Challenger report, employers have announced 497,151 planned hires, down 35% from the same point last year and the lowest year-to-date total since 2010. With hiring at a decade low and serial layoffs becoming normalized, many job seekers are taking roles they would once have rejected simply to regain a foothold in a less forgiving market.

Zhao pushed back on the idea of a “jobs recession,” although he acknowledged that hiring has been “very sluggish” for much of the last two years and there is some evidence of job growth slowing significantly and reaching negative territory, including some months with job losses.

“I think you would want to see more evidence before declaring an actual jobs recession,” he said. “A month here and there of negative jobs growth is not good, but we don’t want to declare a new trend based on just a month or two’s worth of data.”

AI, restructurings, and the new power balance

Behind the cuts, a cluster of forces is reshaping corporate staffing decisions. Challenger’s report shows restructuring, business unit closures, and market or economic conditions have driven the bulk of 2025 layoffs, with tens of thousands of jobs also explicitly tied to AI adoption. Since 2023, employers have blamed artificial intelligence for more than 70,000 announced job cuts as they automate routine work and reorganize teams around new tools.​

The squeeze is showing up not just in corporate restructuring plans, but also in real-time payroll data. ADP’s November report, released Wednesday, found private employers shed 32,000 jobs last month—but nearly all of the losses came from small businesses, which cut 120,000 positions, while large corporations actually added 90,000 workers.

ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, in the report, called the decline “broad-based,” but emphasized that small firms with limited cash flow and thin margins “are really weathering an uncertain macro environment and a cautious consumer.” Small employers have faced rising operating costs from tariffs, utility bills, and a Fed hesitant to cut rates, a burden that larger companies have been far better positioned to absorb.

The divergence underscores the widening K-shape in the labor market. White-collar and corporate jobs are being trimmed through rolling, under-the-radar layoffs, while small businesses are facing outright contraction as they struggle with tariffs, higher utility bills, and softer consumer demand. Small firms are almost always the first to lay off workers in a downturn because they feel the pullback in spending sooner and have far less room to absorb rising input costs, Richardson toldAxios. Larger companies have the cash flow, scale, and financing to wait out uncertainty, even as they quietly restructure teams, but small employers simply run out of margin.

However, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, blamed the data on the “Democrat shutdown,” rather than tariffs, during an interview on CNBC. The Cabinet secretary also said those figures will “rebalance and they’ll regrow,” claiming “this is just a near-term event.”

Zhao said he thinks the forever layoffs are contributing to the “malaise” that workers feel about the economy of 2025. “There’s a significant amount of uncertainty and anxiety that workers are feeling around job security and the the risk that another layoff might be coming in just a month or two.” It means, he added, that “workers are constantly on edge.”

Paramount Skydance Corp.’s hostile takeover bid Monday for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. brought together an array of banks, billionaires and sovereign-wealth funds, all with the aim of torpedoing Netflix Inc.’s deal last week.

Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc. are providing the debt commitment, according to filings. RedBird Capital Partners and Larry Ellison — at one point this year the world’s richest person — will backstop the $40.7 billion of equity which will in part be provided by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding Company PJSC and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners.

The names are notable as much for their size as well as their proximity to President Donald Trump, who even before Paramount went public with its bid warned of potential antitrust concerns around Netflix’s planned $72 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Trump, speaking to reporters on Sunday, said he would be personally involved in the decision-making process that now includes a close family member and wealth funds in countries he’s courted to make investments in America. On Monday, he downplayed that involvement, saying neither Paramount nor Netflix were “great friends” of his. Play Video

In a letter to the Warner Bros. board, Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison said the financing partners his firm had lined up — which agreed to forgo governance rights — should help assure of its ability to clinch the deal. 

“We are providing you with funds certain from one of the wealthiest families in the world, a domestic counterparty, while also eliminating any cross-conditionality, which should give WBD’s board complete comfort and certainty as to our ability to close in a timely fashion,” he wrote. 

The latest financing package follows months of negotiations and reworked proposals as Paramount sought to win over Warner Bros. In all, Paramount made six overtures over 12 weeks. In one case, Ellison went to the Beverly Hills home of Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav, the filing showed. 

The iteration now on the table, submitted Dec. 4, includes a $54 billion so-called bridge loan split equally between Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo. For the equity portion, the entirety will be guaranteed by the Ellison family and New York investment firm RedBird in “a radical simplification” of a previous plan after the Warner Bros. board expressed concerns, according to the filing. 

Larry Ellison, the 81-year-old father of David and founder of Oracle Corp. who counts Trump as a friend, briefly became the world’s richest person in September after his fortune rose by an unprecedented $89 billion in a day, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Oracle shares have since slid, and he’s worth $277 billion, according to the wealth index.

His trust “has financial resources well in excess of what would be required to meet its commitments,” according to Paramount’s filing, citing 1.16 billion shares of Oracle worth about $252 billion. As of September he had already pledged about one-quarter of those as collateral against personal debt, according to the index.

Paramount had made other salvos to Warner Bros. too: The cast of financing partners no longer includes China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. — which an earlier proposal listed as providing $1 billion — after the Warner Bros. board raised questions about the involvement of another non-US equity financing source. 

That proposal from Dec. 1 also specified an $11.8 billion commitment from the Ellison family, a combined $24 billion from three Gulf-based sovereign wealth funds as well as pledges from RedBird and Affinity Partners. It wasn’t immediately clear from the filings on Monday whether those allocations had changed. 

Kushner, PIF

The Paramount bid marks the second time this year that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has partnered with Kushner on an eye-catching deal. Affinity Partners was part of the consortium that agreed to buy Electronic Arts Inc. in September in a $55 billion transaction. Kushner brokered the initial connection between the video game maker and PIF, and for months acted as a central figure in the talks, Bloomberg reported at that time. 

In addition to the Qatar Investment Authority, a relative newcomer is joining the melee — L’imad. The company — wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi government — has only publicly disclosed one major deal: It agreed in late October to buy a controlling stake in Modon Holding PSC, an Emirati property developer with a $15 billion market value.

The PIF, Affinity Partners, L’imad and QIA have agreed to forgo any governance rights or board seats, which Paramount said would eliminate potential scrutiny from the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Credit Ratings

Paramount’s bid at $30 a share in cash comes after Netflix agreed to buy Warner Bros. for $27.75 in cash and stock in a deal backed by $59 billion of unsecured financing from Wells Fargo & Co., BNP Paribas SA and HSBC Plc. Paramount’s bid is for the entirety of Warner Bros., while Netflix is only interested in the Hollywood studios and streaming business. Warner Bros. announced plans in June to split into two separate publicly traded companies by mid 2026. 

Paramount’s debt package — secured by some of its assets — was designed with an eye on obtaining the combined company an investment-grade rating, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Paramount is currently rated at BB+ by S&P Global Ratings, one level below investment grade, and BBB- by Fitch Ratings, which is on the cusp of junk. 

Paramount’s interim Chief Financial Officer Andrew Warren said on a call Monday that the company expects ratings firms to grade the debt as investment grade, based on deleveraging plans in the roughly two years following the acquisition’s close. Chief Operating Officer Andy Gordon said about $17 billion of the $54 billion debt commitment is reserved to take out and extend an existing bridge loan that Warner Bros. already has. 

Yet Mike Peng, the CEO of design consultancy IDEO, thinks that human creativity, enhanced by AI, could be the path forward for designers. 

AI’s pattern recognition capability can make it an incredibly powerful tool, noted Peng at Fortune Brainstorm Design in Macau on Dec. 2. But its reliance on averages can lead to “somewhat mediocre” results, he warned.

“Creativity is all about not being mediocre and being on the edge,” he added.

Similarly, AI is excellent at iteration, but only creativity can determine where to apply those iterated ideas. “This comes from taste, curation, discernment—you need to know where to look,” Peng advised.

And while AI might outperform humans in terms of execution, or how to get from “point A to point B,” bringing it to life requires creativity and empathy, which Peng said “can only be done by folks like us.”

So how best to inculcate a creative mindset and unlock the power of AI? “The only way we can get better at it—and the only way we as creative people, as designers, can become superpowered—is to be able to experiment” Peng said.

Playfulness, curiosity and experimentation, along with human-centered design are, hallmarks of IDEO, the world-renowned global design and innovation consultancy founded in Palo Alto in 1991. Peng took over as IDEO’s CEO earlier this year, after spending five years as CEO of Moon Creative Lab, a venture studio affiliated with Japan’s Mitsui.

“There is no play without friction,” Peng noted. “Play is about overcoming something, achieving something.” That’s counter to companies often trying to make their products and services faster and easier to use. To avoid mediocrity, “we have to play, we have to experiment, we have to be on the edge” with new technology, he said.

IDEO, he notes, is “in the business of creating something that AI cannot exactly do on its own.” Yet, for him, the human superpower remains understanding human complexity and interactions.

After all, Peng urged, creatives and designers will “be the ones to bring this experience to life.”