Why This Round of Layoffs Feels Different

Layoffs are hard — and this round really is different from what we’ve seen recently. But when I look at where it’s going, I can’t help but be a little excited about what comes next.

Since late 2025, we’ve seen a steady trend of AI-driven layoffs at large companies. Layoffs aren’t unusual in the corporate world, but this round feels different. It is different. If your job is sitting at a computer screen, you should pay attention — because you may be next.

This isn’t a realignment — the work is moving

When I say this round feels different, it’s because it isn’t a normal strategic realignment. It’s a structural shift in the nature of the work itself. Companies see the productivity opportunity of AI and realize they simply don’t need as many people to get the work done as they did a year ago — and most don’t plan to replace that headcount somewhere else.

That’s the heart of The Value Shift. For a century, knowledge work was bought by the hour: you were paid for your time — the days you showed up, the seat you filled, the throughput of a human at a keyboard. AI breaks that bargain. The market is quietly repricing work from paid-for-time to paid-for-outcomes, and when an outcome can be produced without the hours, the hours stop being worth paying for. These layoffs are the first visible edge of that repricing.

The shift is landing first on information workers — people who spend their day in front of a computer, operating a keyboard and a mouse. Think customer service, HR, finance, IT, legal, sales, and operations. These are major functions in most large companies, and a large share of that work is exactly what today’s AI is good at: reading, summarizing, drafting, reconciling, routing. To go deeper on the mechanics, our whitepaper breaks down the situation.

Why this round is different

Companies continuously re-evaluate their workforce against technological and business trends. That isn’t new. They lay off workers in areas that are under-performing or no longer strategically aligned, then redeploy that headroom into growth areas and refresh the team. We see the headlines about the cuts, but over the mid- to long-term, most healthy companies’ headcounts steadily grow.

The first difference this time is the reason: the work is genuinely moving from people to AI, not from one department to another. The second is the scale and timing: many companies are cutting at once. That creates a surge of skilled people chasing a thin set of open roles, and it changes the economics of the job market. Skills that were in high demand and commanded a premium are suddenly closer to surplus commodities. That’s not a comment on anyone’s worth — it’s what happens when the thing the market was paying for changes underneath you.

What are all these professionals going to do?

Impacted employees are struggling to find roles that let them move laterally or move up. Many are forced to take positions outside their field, or to accept lower pay for similar work. It’s a hard situation, and I don’t want to minimize the fear that comes with it. When your livelihood is tied to hours that the market is no longer buying, the ground genuinely shifts under your feet.

Some are stepping back — retraining for other fields, or, if they can afford it, retiring early. Others are waiting it out, drawing down savings and hoping companies start hiring again before the money runs out. Those are the people who worry me most, because waiting is the one move that hands the timing to someone else.

And then there’s a last group: the people using this moment to start something of their own. They see where it’s heading and, instead of waiting and hoping, they take control of their situation. In The Value Shift, this is the whole point: move before someone else decides your story for you. Act early and you control the timing and the terms. Wait too long and the decision gets made for you — with your back against the wall. Right now, that last group is the one truly positioned to come out ahead.

What the next few years look like

The transition we’re going through looks less like normal workforce rebalancing and more like an industrial revolution, where technology displaces an entire class of workers. Look back at the last one for a hint of what’s coming. We’re going to see unemployment. We’re going to see denial from people who don’t want to admit the change is real. We’re going to see anger directed at companies, political leaders, and other decision-makers. And then — we’ll figure it out. We always do.

Someone asked me on LinkedIn recently: “Do you think AI will create more jobs than it eliminates?” My answer was, “AI doesn’t create or eliminate jobs — people do.” There will always be roughly as many jobs as there are people who want to work. Necessity is the mother of invention, feeding our families is about as necessary as it gets, and people are remarkably good at inventing.

A new wave of small businesses

If the existing job market doesn’t offer a way up, the natural response is for people to become entrepreneurs — creating work for themselves and others. The system finds its way back toward equilibrium. What that means for the future is a major influx of startups and small businesses, building new products, services, and markets — many of them powered by the same AI that displaced the old roles, now in the hands of people building outcomes instead of selling hours.

The future for displaced information workers isn’t only working for large companies. It’s starting the small businesses of today that become the large companies of tomorrow. The value didn’t disappear — it moved. The question is whether you move with it, on your own terms, while you still hold the pen.

That’s the argument at the center of The Value Shift: the work is being repriced from time to outcomes, and the people who act early — rather than wait for the decision to be made for them — are the ones who get to write what happens next.