Here are some telling numbers: Last year, nearly 20 million Americans received pink slips. As of June of this year, 10 million employees had been laid off across various industries and companies, including blue-chip tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, as well as formerly secure federal agencies. In total, 1.6 million workers are laid off each month. Losing your job is a perpetual threat: 40% of American workers say they have been laid off at least once during their career; most of them were surprised.
These numbers are just as bad – and often worse – for those at the top. Recruiters tell us that about 40 to 60 percent of senior executives are forced to resign, in part because of today’s record CEO turnover. Regardless of title or income, the same label is applied (and self-applied) to people who have lost their job: you have been “fired.”
Words matter. And the word “fired” implies a fault – your fault. While some employees are fired because of their performance or behavior, millions more are victims of restructuring, downsizing and strategic changes driven by investor and market pressures. This affects every business in America, whether you’re on the shop floor, middle management, or the C-suite. No one is immune.
We live in an economy of churn, mass layoffs and routine restructuring that has not affected generations of workers who retired before the 1980s. Leanne’s parents collectively spent more than 40 years at Boeing; Nina’s father spent 30 years at Hughes Aircraft. Our parents’ generation could count on stability, security, predictability – and a deep loyalty to business that ran both ways. One study found that 58% of Fortune 100 companies have announced layoffs in 2023, compared to just 5% in 1979.
Back then, being “fired” was a shortcut to showing unproductive, ill-suited, or unethical workers the door – preferably before they stole the stapler. There are still many employees who have earned their pink card. Performance and integrity issues? It’s on them. We should not hesitate to hold employees accountable. But in today’s turbulent economy, the vast majority of laid-off workers are not laid off because of personal failure.
More than ever in modern times, individuals’ careers are fragile, unpredictable and subject to pressures beyond their control. The personal toll of job loss is enormous. We have been fortunate to work with some of the most talented and visionary business leaders in the world. And even among these super achievers, job loss shakes confidence and self-esteem, threatening to erase years of well-deserved impact and success from their minds.
“Leaders know that the exit doesn’t really concern them,” explains Nicole Didda, executive coach. “They have the performance, the reviews, the credibility. Yet the word ‘dismissed’ hits hard. Especially for women, it undermines confidence, making them feel ‘less than’, even when they know better.”
This damaging psychic weight of insecurity and self-blame seeps into our society and politics, where polls show a stubborn, long-standing trend of declining confidence in a better future. This is not surprising when we know that 81% of workers in 2025 fear losing their job.
With the unsettling feeling of a loss of control, even the most talented and accomplished employees tend to identify themselves as “fired,” even when the cause of their layoff is a market downturn. Making fun of yourself for letting yourself go can create bonding, but it also undermines trust, credibility, and faith in a better future.
These economic forces are not going to change, especially with AI bringing its share of uncertainty and disruption to employment. All the more reason to reframe the discourse on job loss. If almost half of the workforce has experienced job losses, shouldn’t we leave the word “laid off” aside?
Let’s be more thoughtful – and understanding – in how we treat our colleagues (and ourselves) when describing workplace departures. Let’s replace “fired” with something like: “released for the future.” Let’s make the increasingly common task of moving on less dramatic and much more human.
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