Layoffs in Silence: How Companies Are Downsizing Without Public Scrutiny

Frustrated Employee Dealing with Work Issues

The Rise of Quiet Layoffs in 2024!

Companies are laying people off without news of some of this.   The Job market seems to be going through some of the hardest times the last few months.    As of this post I’ve been unemployed for several months and have yet to find another IT job after putting out over a 150 applications.   The real problem is that the Government is saying we have all these jobs available but I have yet to see these jobs that are so common.  This process is so the company can downsize their workforce in a discreet manner to avoid any Public Relations negative press.

The Ethical implication of Quiet Layoffs

The uncertainty of quiet layoffs are creating an atmosphere of fear and mistrust among any company that does this.   It makes the employees undervalued and even anxious about their job security which can also make it harder to get more people to trust what will happen next.     The idea that you can apply for any of these jobs is also at question because we really don’t know if they are hiring or just looking like they are hiring.   Companies will show they are hiring to keep the employees thinking they will have help soon or they may do this if they have contracts with other companies to look like they are trying to find someone and say they can’t find them.    All these are valid ways that companies are being unethical.   There ae note northing ideas that this can be debatable and can even argue the necessity of tough economic times while others can see this as an unfair practices.   Companies need to consider the long-term impact of these practices on their brand and employee relations.

Silent Hiring and Quiet Layoffs

Companies are taking way longer to interview or even get back telling you that you weren’t selected for one reason or another.    Companies are making it harder to get hired by having applicants jump through so many hoops or interviews.  It seems to be the one way to get applicants not to complete the process and they can claim they didn’t find someone to fill the job.   It is also entirely way to prevent from having to pay anyone and still look like you are hiring people for employees and clients of yours.   This makes it seem like nothing is wrong but in reality it is a problem and the dynamics of transparent communication can make it even more difficult at times.   It however isn’t going to go away anytime soon until enough people start speaking up about this and reporting these types of layoffs.   Remember to keep your resume up to date right now and know you aren’t alone in finding a job in this tough job market.   The searching for a job has been the hardest thing to do in the last few months.    I’ve heard some people needed to apply to over a 900 applications just to get hired to a job.

Why the Unemployment rate is Wrong and why you should care!

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The Unemployment is at 3.7% for January(2024)!

Now that isn’t bad for the economy if this was actually true. I know that there are even more people searching for a job than you can imagine. Is the unemployment rate wrong?  I suspect it is way higher than what the US government knows about due to the fact that most of the jobs that people got let go from were less than 6 months contracts or some probably even have money in their account to survive for a while unemployed. I am one of those who have enough money right now to have 3 or 4 months off and not have to worry about anything. I don’t have any major debt and I have no loans out that would be cause for me to have to make payments on those things. So the real question we need to ask is what is correct percentage of people who are unemployed. I think it would be more like 5 to 6% right now if everyone would file for unemployment. I think some worry that if the unemployment rate goes to high then it will cause problems in finding a job even more.

Understanding the Unemployment Rate

It can be quite difficult to figure out what the unemployment rate is actually but I do think we have to at least consider that it’s higher than we thought it is and we may be in a form of recession / Depression scenario.  I saw a video that I’ll share with you and you can see how this might be viable to what is happening now.   I encourage to watch all of it and decide for yourselves if this is even a possibility.  I however know that the ones I have talked to have not filled unemployed for one reason or another.

Now after watching this video, I am sure you have some questions that you might want to ask. One of the obvious questions I came up with myself is this relevant to what is happening now. I would say yes it is due to the fact that I am seeing this more and more the last few weeks with people struggling to keep a job and applying to jobs in general. We aren’t going to get out of this real quickly and I even think we will have more aggressive layoffs in the future just by looking at the spike of layoffs we’ve already had in the January.

chart from layoffs.fyi

Since most companies only worry about Quarterly earnings the next quarter starts in April and as such it would seem that companies will downsize even more either March or April. It would be a good guess that it would be likely in April after the earnings report for each company is looked at and examined by the stock holders and CEO. They will execute a decision to layoff more people to keep the projected earnings reports from impacting their bottom dollar. It will also keep the stock holders happy that they don’t see any layoffs that month before hand. It doesn’t look good to the stock when layoffs happen right when the earnings report becomes available to them.

Unemployed people are just burned out!

The reason why the unemployment numbers a re wrong is that most of those who have been trying to find a job ever since they have been laid off is they are just burned out and are tired of getting those rejection letters and companies that say they are hiring but looks to just be phishing for the right person and not really looking to hire people that could fill the spot they are advertising about.  So that being said, they haven’t even filed for unemployment and that is why you haven’t seen the unemployment rate getting higher and people thinking we aren’t in a recession or even a Depression due to that the Government doesn’t know they are looking for a job.  I know that most of the people want a job but they either pivoted to work where ever they can or created other ways to earn income right now without having to file for unemployment benefits.  I would bet they either took part time jobs or they have other ways to bring in the money to help them survive.

Did you apply for unemployment or did you find ways to bring in income without having to work at an office job for the time?  why not leave a comment and let people know what you’ve done to keep bringing money in so you can let others know how they can earn money even in this trying time.

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