These are the employees most likely to be laid off in 2024

The layoffs come as the economy sends mixed signals (Representative)

If the first month of 2024 is any indication, the nation’s largest employers – which just ended a massive layoff last year – will continue to lay off workers. Just in the past few weeks, Alphabet, Amazon, Citigroup, Ebay, Macy’s, Microsoft, Shell, Sports Illustrated and Wayfair have all announced layoffs.

On Tuesday, United Parcel Service said it planned to cut 12,000 jobs and bring employees back to the office five days a week.

The layoffs come as the economy sends mixed signals. On the one hand, U.S. job openings just rose to a three-month high. Stocks are near record highs, reigniting talk of a soft landing for the economy. A key measure of U.S. consumer confidence recently posted its biggest jump since 2005.

On the other hand, a growing number of high-profile layoffs are adding uncertainty to the white-collar world, and concerns about recession and replacement by generative artificial intelligence have become standard water-cooler discussions. The growing crackdown on remote work is also causing anxiety.

“There’s a ripple effect and a fear factor,” said Ariel Schur, CEO of ABS Staffing Solutions in New York.

How worried should you be about your job? Bloomberg News spoke with economists, recruiters, consultants and career coaches across the country to assess the current state of the job market and develop strategies to deal with it. This is what they said:

Who is likely to be laid off?

Middle managers and remote workers beware.

“Companies often target middle managers for layoffs. They’re trying to streamline,” said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor. “Middle managers tend to get squeezed from both sides at times like this. They’re often laid off, But they are also often responsible for implementing these measures to improve efficiency.”

At the same time, this round of layoffs highlights the vulnerability of remote workers. Some reports suggest that as many companies try to bring employees back to the office, employers are targeting remote workers.

“Being away from home makes it easier to leave,” Schur said. “You don’t have that day-to-day interaction. From a human perspective, it’s easier to fire someone. It’s easier to use that as justification for layoffs.”

George Penn, executive vice president at consulting firm Gartner, said the best companies ask two questions when considering layoffs: Is the employee making money for the company now? Will this employee make money for the company in the future? Anyone who cannot answer “yes” to any of these questions should proceed with caution.

What can you do to prepare?

Appear.

This is advice from Daniel Keum, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, to employees who are anxious about their roles in the current climate.

“The era of remote work is fading. If a job can be done remotely, it can be moved overseas,” he said. “Show up and show commitment.”

Executive coach Monique Valcour emphasizes the importance of the quality of workplace interactions during uncertain times. It can be really tempting for anxious employees to spend time trying to understand where management is thinking and where the ax might fall. But “sharing low-quality information and organizing gossip is unproductive,” she said.

Instead, Valcour advises employees to work on building strong relationships with management, avoid spreading themselves too thin, make the commitments they’ve already made count, and accept that some changes may be coming.

“Uncertainty,” she said. “That’s part of having a career.”

This is a storm, not a tsunami

The layoffs are unsettling, but many economists say workers shouldn’t be too concerned as long as recent economic trends persist.

“We’re getting a lot of stories about specific parts of the labor market,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Overall, blue-collar jobs are doing well, while white-collar, professional services jobs in areas like finance and technology have been struggling. “But this level of layoffs is actually a normal part of our labor market,” she said.

Shierholz also explained that layoffs and unemployment insurance claims are lower than before the pandemic.

Some of them are seasonal

Payne, who advises companies on workforce planning, redesign and constraints, said the level of layoffs so far is not that different from previous years. A lot depends on what the company plans for the year.

“December and January are when layoffs typically occur,” Payne said. “They’re cleaning up and fixing all their budgets from the previous year, or they’re sorting and positioning themselves for the coming year.”

Many companies — especially tech companies — have overhired during the pandemic. Some are still correcting this. It’s against this backdrop that Lauren Goodwin, chief market strategist at New York Life Investments, said the layoffs she’s seeing are “more about normalization,” rather than Not “a series of profit-driven layoffs.”

Some of them are cyclical

Still, some of the layoffs appear to be related to the current business environment, where interest rates are currently high but are widely expected to decline later this year.

“Businesses are also repositioning, repositioning and restructuring for growth,” Kohm said. “In general, every sector and company is looking to grow, but growth is becoming more expensive because interest rates are high and there is uncertainty about when they will come down.”

This uncertainty, coupled with the desire for growth, has led to one of the more confusing trends in the current labor market: layoffs coinciding with opportunistic hiring in some fields, such as artificial intelligence.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)