Companies used to save their layoffs for a single, painful day. Now more of them are stretching that pain out, cutting small groups of workers every few months instead of making one large cut and moving on. Some call it the drip, drip, drip approach. Others have started calling it the era of forever layoffs.

Microsoft illustrates the pattern well. The company laid off around 9,000 employees in mid-2025, then cut another 4,800 roles in July 2026, even as it forecast record spending on AI infrastructure. Cisco and Cloudflare have followed a similar script this year, Cisco cutting nearly 4,000 jobs amid further AI investment and Cloudflare trimming about 20 percent of its workforce, both while reporting record revenue.

Wayne Cascio, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Denver and author of Responsible Restructuring, said the pattern varies by industry.

"What we're seeing really varies by industry and by sector," Cascio said. "We're seeing a lot of AI instituted layoffs in high tech. But the biggest thing is that the economic logic that underlies layoffs is pretty compelling."

The economic logic behind the cuts

That logic comes down to a basic question every business eventually asks.

"There are only two ways to make money in business," Cascio said. "You either cut costs or you grow your revenues. And if you think about what's more predictable, your future costs or your future revenues, obviously it's your future costs. Salaries are fixed costs, and those are an attractive target when times get tough."

But whether spreading those cuts out over time actually pays off financially is a different question.

"My research is very clear about this," Cascio said. "We followed S&P 500 companies for up to two years after layoffs, and if all they do is cut people and don't change anything else, they never outperform their competitors. Other studies have followed firms as long as nine years after layoffs, and the conclusion is the same."

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