Oct 9, 2026 · 14 min · 10 segments
Layoffs and a shaky job market can sit in the back of your mind like a low hum, and that stress does not stay at work. It follows you home, into your sleep, your spending, and your relationships. In…
Here's the first thing I want you to hear.
This is not a new song.
We are decades into an era where employer loyalty has thinned out to almost nothing.
The rough job market and shaky economy feel fresh, but the tune is an old one, and the verses keep coming.
Let's look at some numbers.
Through the 2010s, the US employers laid off or discharged roughly 2 million people every year, and that was in the years nobody called a crisis.
Ordinary churn is enormous.
More recently, monthly layoffs and discharge have run between about 1.3 and 1.9 million.
Then there are the announced cuts, the big headline kind.
Employers announced around 761,000 in 2024 and more than 1.2 million in 2025, the highest since 2020.
Tech alone announced over 155,000 of those cuts last year.
I see this in my office.
Over half of my clients worry about job security at some point while we work together.
A great many of them work for big tech companies, where layoff rounds arrive like weather and everyone knows another front's coming.
Now, a quick side note.
Something to keep in mind is announcements do not automatically equate to the loss of jobs.
They have seen, and unfortunately I don't have any data on this, but a good portion of employees shipped into a different position or are able to find another job shortly after the layoff.
So those numbers I mentioned may appear larger than actuality, though at the end of the day, we know sudden unemployment happens.
So today, I wanna talk about ways to turn down the volume on that stress so you can do your work without one eye on the exit, and you can have a little bit more restful sleep at night.
Here's the first thing I want you to hear.
This is not a new song.
We are decades into an era where employer loyalty has thinned out to almost nothing.
The rough job market and shaky economy feel fresh, but the tune is an old one, and the verses keep coming.
Let's look at some numbers.
Through the 2010s, the US employers laid off or discharged roughly 2 million people every year, and that was in the years nobody called a crisis.
Ordinary churn is enormous.
More recently, monthly layoffs and discharge have run between about 1.3 and 1.9 million.
Then there are the announced cuts, the big headline kind.
Employers announced around 761,000 in 2024 and more than 1.2 million in 2025, the highest since 2020.
Tech alone announced over 155,000 of those cuts last year.
I see this in my office.
Over half of my clients worry about job security at some point while we work together.
A great many of them work for big tech companies, where layoff rounds arrive like weather and everyone knows another front's coming.
Now, a quick side note.
Something to keep in mind is announcements do not automatically equate to the loss of jobs.
They have seen, and unfortunately I don't have any data on this, but a good portion of employees shipped into a different position or are able to find another job shortly after the layoff.
So those numbers I mentioned may appear larger than actuality, though at the end of the day, we know sudden unemployment happens.
So today, I wanna talk about ways to turn down the volume on that stress so you can do your work without one eye on the exit, and you can have a little bit more restful sleep at night.
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