New Delhi: A plethora of sectors including technology, finance, manufacturing, media and even retail witnessed downsizing of staff over the last two years. As per a report by Business Times, pretexts for layoffs have shifted and a primary reason is the current advancements in technology especially in the field of AI.

Reputable sources suggest that employee layoffs will continue into the year of 2025 as large enterprises such as Ally Financial, Microsoft and BlackRockadopt new strategies and restructuring plans. Business Insider identifies that the plans are focused on cost-cutting through means of modernization and AI integrations into their company. Dropbox, Google, and IBM are just a few that have already announced job cuts due to the result of AI.  Many companies plan to follow this model during 2025:

BlackRock

As stated by Bloomberg, the company has plans of cutting off around 200 of it’s 21,000 employee workforce with hopes to reshape the company to better suit its objectives. However, they also have started buying in a large number of employees, stating they hired around 3750 new employees in 2024 and plan to hire in another 2,000 by 2025. The president and Operating Officer Rob Goldstein stated that those cut employees will allow for the needed changes to be made to the organization structure.

Bridgewater Associates

In order to unify its administrative strategies, Bridgewater Associates decided to dismiss 7% of its workers in the past few months. The staggering number of layoffs has cut down the workforce to the levels of 2023. It is important to highlight, however, that turnover is common: Ray Dalio, the founder of the firm, said back in 2019 that about 30% of people employed in the company during that year left it after a year and a half.

The Washington Post

As part of a post-COVID restructuring, The Washington Post saw itself lining up restructuring policies to ease costs. The plan to reduce the staff size by 100 members was later confirmed by a spokesperson, in order to safeguard the integrity of the newsroom, as well as assist the business on it’s long term transformations. The company seeks to remain competitive and responsive to industry changes, according to a Reuters report, and to connect with users through different channels.

Microsoft

Microsoft wants to concentrate on specific employees, and in order to revise their policies, they will undergo some layoffs. What the layout to be remains a mystery though; but the company does make some of their principles transparent, such as searching for promising employees. “Lack of performance will not go unaddressed,” the Microsoft representative told Business Insider, implying that structural layoffs would happen to some employees.

Ally Financial

Ally Financial stated its intention of terminating almost 500 employees which amounts to 4.5% of its total 11,000 employees. They have clarified that their intention is to layoff the underperforming employees who fail to fulfill their respective business functional roles while still actively recruiting in some business functions. As reported by Charlotte observer, ally had conducted layoffs in October of 2023 too x.

As per Layoffs.fyi’s recent report, the tech industry saw behemoth cuts in 2023 and 2024, leading to pruning off employees on mass scale, with the report noting 152,074 employees for 545 tech companies in 2024, additionally 1,193 companies in 2023 let go of 264,220 employees. This trend aligns with the concerning pattern of the transformation pace of the economy along with the technological innovations being too fast. It then begs the question - Is the threat of automation more than its benefits? Or, as the trends suggest, the rapid pace of innovation within the job market entails the need for adaptability and growth.