layoffs are painful and avoidable. so why do they happen?

a personal look into layoffs, the short-term thinking of the corporate world and the toll it takes on workers.

i’ve been worried about being laid off soon since at least august. people have been saying a recession is looming, if not already happening, for months. my constant fear of being fired for incompetence or performance issues became overshadowed by my fear of losing my job to an even more made up concept (the economy).

in december i said to myself, “if i make it through january, i’m probably safe.” i remembered this the other day and thought, “huh, january’s almost over, i guess i’ve almost made it out,” which in retrospect feels like i jinxed myself.

this is my first layoff ever, since this is my first “real job” out of university. i knew this would happen to me eventually, as i’ve watched it happen to my friends, and i saw it happening all around me during the great recession. watching that reality unfold starting when i was 10 years old set me up for a life of fearing it happening to me. i witnessed the effects of one of the worst financial crises since the great depression in a very formative time of my life, and saw how badly it affected not only older adults in my life, but the older millennials who would come to realize the job market and housing market would never be in their favour.

so it’s got me thinking a lot: why do layoffs happen? why is it the favourable alternative to other kinds of budget cuts, or just taking the losses through the downturn?