17 Signs Layoffs Are Coming at Your Company (2026)
- Corporate Kate
- Sep 6, 2025
- 13 min read
Updated: Aug 23
Is it just me, or is everything doom and gloom around here lately?
That was the question I was asking myself right before a massive round of layoffs hit my organization in 2024. It turns out I was right to think something was going on, and if you are getting that same feeling, you are probably right too.
Some of the signs that layoffs are coming are obvious. Others are much harder to spot, especially if you are not sitting in the seats where the financial conversations happen. Below is a list of 17 that I witnessed at my own company that later proved that cost cutting moves were being made. Review these signs below and use it to decide if you are safe to stay or if it is time to say goodbye.
Table of Contents
1. Your Company Was Recently Acquired or Merged
If your company has acquired or completed a merger with another entity, chances are that the two businesses are going to be run similarly to each other. That includes the number of employees needed to run them. Once product lines and processes are fully merged, there will not be a need to maintain the same amount of staff to manage one cohesive system. Areas such as Finance, HR, and Operations tend to take some of the biggest hits in these scenarios.
Bonus Sign: Are you noticing that people from your original company are not being given leadership roles in the merger, and that the other entity's staff appears to be leading the changes? That is a big sign that it is your portion of the company about to get the axe.
2. Private Equity Is Circling or an IPO Is Being Discussed
This one almost seems counterintuitive. If investors want to fund and grow what my company does, isn't that a good sign? In the long run, maybe. But in the short term, private equity firms (or the investment banks doing the IPO underwriting) want to see operating numbers that are as close to perfect as possible before they make their investment or take the business public. If they think the company should be operating leaner compared to its competition, they will put pressure on leadership to make changes to meet those goals.
This sign might not be easy to spot if you are not in a leadership position, if you work remotely, or if your executives are not forthcoming. Set up a Google News alert for your company and check it periodically, since business publications will report on possible investments or IPOs before they are formally announced at most large private corporations.
3. The Company Is Missing Revenue Goals or Losing Clients
I bet you already knew this one was going to make the list. That is because a company facing financial difficulty through lost revenue or lost clients is the most likely to cut associates to make up the difference on the balance sheet. If you notice that your organization is losing more clients than it is bringing in this year, or that those client contracts are worth a lot less than they were in previous years, then keep your eyes and ears open for news of a potential layoff.
Bonus Tip: Your finance team might treat internal communication about financials the same way it would treat a message to shareholders: overly positive despite the misgivings in the data. Regardless of the tone used in the presentation, ask what the data actually signifies.
A popular misdirection is saying “we are on track to meet our goals by the end of the year.” But what do the previous quarter's financials look like? How far behind is the company, and how much is in the sales pipeline that can realistically make that up? Use your better judgment to figure out what is really happening, especially if year-end bonuses are on the line when metrics are not hit. Companies may fudge how things are going so associates do not lose steam at the end of the year.
4. An Outside Consulting Firm Is Reviewing Your Team's Processes
Anyone who has worked in corporate America for even a short amount of time is going to become very familiar with consulting firms that are there to “help” businesses make decisions for greater efficiency and profitability.
But if your company is not doing well, or a new executive team has taken over, chances are that the consulting firm has been hired to help them figure out where to trim the proverbial fat from the organization. If the firm has specifically been hired to review teams in your organization and find out how they operate, be extra wary. They may be creating documentation that will be used to replace you with a new process or an outsourced team.
5. You Are Asked to Document Your Time or Your Processes
While we are on the subject of documentation, a request to have your job outlined in more detail for higher ups can be a sign that layoffs to your team are coming. This one is much more nuanced, since it could be part of a larger company initiative to better track workflows across the organization, so take it into account only if the other signs are happening at the same time.
Still not sure whether you should be concerned? Here are the green flag (good) and red flag (layoff) versions of being asked to provide more documentation:
Green flag: Leadership wants to better document processes as an objective for the year across the whole company, you lack any documentation for certain processes, or new software has been introduced to allow for better documentation.
Red flag: Consulting firms are meeting with your specific team to understand your processes and documents. Executives have become highly engaged in understanding what you and your team members do. Time tracking is instituted with a heavy emphasis on how much of your time is revenue-producing work.
6. New Political Policies Are Hitting Your Industry
This one is heavily geared toward the American workforce, given the recent wave of new tariffs, but tariffs are not the only signal that changes might be coming to your company. Did the FDA decline to approve a product your company was banking on releasing this year? Did CMS introduce new regulations that will require far more operational expense from your health organization than leadership budgeted for? Staying aware of how changes in the political landscape affect your company can help you keep a step ahead if a career change becomes necessary.
The tricky part is that policy changes rarely show up at your desk looking like policy changes. They hit a line item three steps upstream, and by the time the effect reaches your team it has been reframed as a reprioritization or a strategic reset. If your company sells a physical product, watch input costs. If it sells into a regulated industry, watch the regulator. If a meaningful share of revenue comes from government contracts or reimbursement, watch the budget those contracts are paid out of.
Bonus Tip: Your industry's trade publications will usually flag a policy change months before your executive team says anything about it internally. Pick one and skim it weekly. And if your company is public, the risk factors section of the annual report tells you exactly which policy changes leadership is worried about, in their own words.
7. Your Company Has Had Layoffs Before
When a company has its first layoff, it is kind of like opening Pandora's box. In the myth, once the box was opened, the entire world became subject to suffering and strife where there had previously been peace. The same goes for layoffs. Once that trigger has been pulled, most employees will always be in fear of it happening again and will have concerns about their job security. In fact, it takes roughly two years for employee engagement to return to pre-layoff levels once a layoff has happened.
Since trust with employees is already lost, companies feel there is less harm in repeating the action, because the damage to morale is already done. Never mind that all of the remaining employees will be dealing with anxiety, survivor guilt, and low self-esteem in addition to that low morale. Anything in the name of profit, am I right?
8. The Executive Team Is Driving a Cultural Shift
If you are in a management position, this one might be easier to see the nuance of, but big changes on your executive team usually mean that big changes are coming to your organization. Often this starts with a new President, CTO, or other upper-level executive coming in, and that executive has their own vision of how they want the company to operate.
Do your best to listen to how new executives present initiatives to your team and what their goals are for the near and long term. If you have a good relationship with any other executives at your company, ask them for their impression of the new leadership (that is, if Sign 13 is not already happening).
9. Your Company Opened an Offshore Office or Moved Work Abroad
This one might as well be a red flag being waved in front of your face saying “Danger.” The only reason a company ever moves teams offshore is that it believes there are roles being done domestically that can be done cheaper. I have worked at companies where, upon opening the office, the message was “offshore is just here to help you, not to take your job from you.” That lasted a year and a half before the first team was let go and the work moved overseas.
Do not fall for any company propaganda saying this change will have no effect on your job. Sadly, in this day and age, if a company feels it can get the work done for cheaper, it is going to go that route regardless of the quality of work you put out. An offshore team being opened is usually the signal that job turbulence is about to increase at your work.
10. The Company Is in the News, and Not for Good Reasons
Bad PR isn't just a bad look for a company, it is almost always a financial hit as well. Companies like CrowdStrike and Boeing will tell you that once your goodwill is gone with the public, it is hard to get back. That lack of trust can affect a company's revenue in the short term. While you may not see the immediate after effects of bad press at your company, review your company's quarterly results to see whether revenue and client retention are trending down.
The part that actually reaches you is what happens internally after the story breaks. Legal costs go up. Money gets poured into crisis communications and into fixing whatever caused the problem. Sales cycles stall because prospects decide to wait and see how it plays out. Existing clients smell leverage and come to the renewal asking for concessions. All of that lands on the same budget your headcount is paid out of.
Bonus Tip: Pay attention to how leadership talks about the story internally. A company that addresses it head on, walks you through the remediation plan, and puts an actual number on the financial impact is usually managing it. A company that goes quiet and tells everyone to route questions to Communications is usually managing something bigger than it is letting on.
11. Hiring Is Frozen, or Only Offshore Roles Are Open
When a company switches gears from wanting growth to worrying about overall operational costs, it usually signals concern about the long-term financial strategy of the business. A hiring freeze is typically instituted in the hope that the company will not have to go through layoffs to help the balance sheet, or in the hope that hiring only from a cheaper labor population will allow productivity to remain steady without spending more money.
Hiring freezes can go on for a very long time (I have worked at a company with a five-year hiring freeze) and can hinder your career growth if they also coincide with no promotions for current workers. Hiring freezes may be survivable, but they can be frustrating to have to manage in your current role. If a freeze at your company has stretched past a year with no end in sight, that is reason enough to start looking and networking in the background.
12. You or Your Coworkers Are Being Put on PIPs Unexpectedly
PIPs should never be used as a vehicle to remove employees who are executing all the functions of their job, but the reality can be something quite different. If you are noticing that management is putting stricter requirements on your team's job performance that don't seem in line with your work, they may be using a PIP as a way to remove your specific team, and others, without a mass layoff.
Document the changes being asked of you and work diligently to meet the requirements of the PIP in these cases. If you follow the actions set forth by the PIP, they are going to have less legal standing to remove you, and it will buy you more time to find a new job. That doesn't mean that you won't be removed in a restructuring, but at least you won't be removed for performance reasons. Use the time the PIP buys you to get your money in order too, starting with building an emergency fund.
13. Executives Are Leaving in Large Numbers
Have you ever had an executive who seemed to love the company and was so enthusiastic about the work just up and leave one day? Same. But this isn't that surprising in cases where there has been a shift away from the established culture of the company.
If you see many executives leave at once (especially within one organization), that is a sure-fire sign that a new senior executive has taken over and did not feel these leaders were a fit for how they wanted to run their organization. Or the executives voluntarily chose to find new careers because they did not like the direction the new executive was taking. Usually in these cases you will also see the new executive start to bring in their own team of people they have worked with previously, people they know will execute their vision. While this may not mean layoffs, it does mean that big changes are likely to come to your work, and usually a cultural shift is about to begin.
14. AI and Automation Are Being Pursued for Efficiency
If you work in tech, you are probably so sick of the phrase “AI” at work that you just want to skip this section. But if you don't know already, AI is the buzzword for work optimization that all companies are pursuing, both to look technologically advanced compared to the competition and to bring down their operating costs.
If you work with the actual AI implementations like I do, you may know that the gap between what AI can do and what corporate executive teams and their shareholders expect it to do is a pretty wide gap. But regardless of what AI is capable of at this point, companies are laying off people with the expectation that AI can replace them.
Even if you work in a highly specialized field that requires a lot of critical thinking, an executive team may still think that LLMs can do your job as well as you can. You can't be saved if they ultimately decide to go for it, but you may get re-hired once they realize they made a mistake.
15. Benefits Are Being Cut or Reduced
Benefits in this case can mean many different things. It may just be that snacks are no longer going to be free in the breakroom, or that office lunches are going away. It could be something bigger, like your health insurance premiums skyrocketing because the company has moved to a less comprehensive plan. In any case, these can be signals of economizing moves that the company is taking to lessen its financial burden, and they can be a sign of the company's overall financial health.
Bonus Tip: Have a friend in HR? While they may not be able to share anything about impending layoffs, they may be able to provide some insight into why the benefits changes are taking place and how much of the decision is a cost-cutting move.
16. Your Boss's Attitude or Demeanor Has Changed
This is another “could be nothing, could be something” clue. If your manager seems much more distant than previously, or is showing less interest in helping you achieve your goals for the year, it may be because they know that the effort won't be worth it soon. But this one could just as easily be caused by stressful family, financial, or relationship situations outside of work. A change in your boss's behavior plus many of the other clues discussed on this page is more likely to be from potential layoffs than a change in your boss's behavior alone.
If you have a close relationship with your boss and you start noticing them exhibiting stressful behaviors that could be coming from either corporate or personal life, ask if there is anything going on with work that you can help with, since you have noticed they seem to have a lot going on. Let that be the introduction into opening a line of communication to find out whether their stress is coming more from work or from other external factors.
17. Layoff Talk Is Circulating in Gossip and at Happy Hours
This is probably the first time in your life you have ever been told to trust a rumor. But in this case, information might be circling that isn't supposed to be widely spread throughout the company. It just takes one person with loose lips to spread the word that something is happening and have it spread like wildfire.
If you hear it from sources across multiple teams and multiple parts of the company, chances are that there is a big initiative behind the scenes to cut costs. Get your resume ready just in case that happens.
Worried?
While these are the most common signs that you will see, companies are always inventing new ways to bring unemployment to your doorstep (like the unhinged Better.com CEO). The only thing anyone knows for certain is that layoffs are always coming in this day and age, and it is in your best interest to always be prepared if they do.
If You Are Seeing Several of These Signs
One sign on this list means very little on its own. Five or six of them showing up at the same time means it is worth acting like something is coming, even if nothing has been announced. Three things to do this week:
Update your resume now. Do it while you still have access to your own accomplishments. Performance reviews, project documentation, and the metrics that prove what you did all disappear the day your laptop gets wiped.
Start looking quietly. You do not have to leave, but you should know what is out there and what it pays. Set your LinkedIn to "Open to Work" privately and start understanding your options.
Know your runway. Work out how many months you could cover with no paycheck, and start working on emergency and sinking funds now.
About the Author
Corporate Kate has spent nearly 15 years inside corporate tech, managing large teams and making the hiring decisions most job seekers never get to see. She holds a bachelor's degree in Finance and writes about layoffs, careers, and money.
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