How multiple rounds of layoffs can impact remaining workers

Meta announced yesterday it’s laying off hundreds of workers across several divisions, fresh after another round of cuts back in January.

If it feels like you’re regularly hearing about layoffs in the tech sector, you’re not imagining things. The resume site Zety did a survey of tech layoff announcements and found almost a third of tech companies did at least two rounds of layoffs between 2023 and 2025.

Zety looked at publicly reported data about more than 1,000 tech companies.

“We saw that almost half of all layoffs come from repeat layoff companies, and 70% of repeat layoffs are actually happening within 12 months,” said Zety’s Jasmine Escalera.

It’s bad enough for the workers left behind after one round of layoffs, with survivor’s guilt and all. When you have multiple layoffs, “they're thinking, ‘OK, wait a minute, am I next?’” said Vicki Salemi with job search site Monster. “So there's more anxiety; usually, there's more concern. There's just more stress in general.”

That has consequences for the business as well. Seventy percent of companies that lay people off see a decline in employee morale in the first year, according to Sandra Sucher, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.

Plus, “there's a 20% decline in productivity, higher rates of product defects, and, in general, a sort of a concern about taking risks,” she said.

After all, it’s hard to do your best work when you are worried the next round of layoffs is coming for you.