Companies are getting worse at letting their employees go

Empathetic leadership has all but disappeared after the covid era

- BETH KOWITT

Last week's jobs numbers in the US may have shown a drop in the number of pink slips hitting workers' desks in May, but don't be fooled: Layoffs are alive and well in 2025. In the first half of the year, employers in America let go of nearly 745,000 people, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's the second-highest number for the period since 2009—surpassed only by the first six months of 2020, when Covid essentially shut down the global economy.

The cuts are part of a broader trend. About 20% of S&P 500 companies have fewer employees today than they did a decade ago, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.

Yet, even after having had years of practice slashing payrolls, most companies are still shockingly bad at it. In fact, it is the frequency and volume of workforce cuts that seem to be making them even worse. Normalizing the practice has ended up sucking the humanity right out of it.

Case in point: Dating app Bumble, which last week announced that it was laying off 240 employees—that's 30% of its workforce. Employees received the news via video call and responded with thumbs-down emojis.