#90: 21,417 Laid Off in 2023. 15,039 More in 2024. What Now?
These numbers shook me. But they also gave me an idea.
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21,417 Laid Off in 2023. 15,039 More in 2024. What Now?
This week,
shared some sobering statistics about workplace disruption in his newsletter, .The first one:
73% of employees say they’ve experienced some form of workplace disruption in the past year.
The second:
21,417 jobs lost in entertainment and media in 2023. 15,039 more gone in 2024. ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️
“In the last two years, Media has shed 5X more jobs than in the previous two - and 2025 has started with substantial job losses across Media and Tech: At NBCU, Meta, Microsoft, Paramount, The LA Times, The Washington Post, VOX, Disney, Lionsgate, Disco Bros, Allen Media Group, and beyond. Recent and pending mergers or acquisitions, along with an economy teetering on recession, will almost certainly result in thousands of more job cuts in these industries. Even worse, with workers being slashed from America’s largest employer - the US Government - competition for open Knowledge Worker gigs will be steeper than any point in recent memory.” — Evan Shapiro,
These aren’t just numbers. They are shockwaves. And yet—when I saw them laid out—I felt something unexpected: relief.
I was laid off as part of the 2023 media and entertainment blitzkrieg—an industry-wide unraveling that displaced more than 21,000 people, seemingly overnight. A few months before I was laid off, I remember thinking that if I was in the next wave of layoffs, I’d have no problem finding a new job. By the time I was laid off a few months later, the job market had taken a turn for the much worse.
Since I got my pink slip, I’ve spent an exhausting amount of time trying to “figure out my next career era.” Trying to dream. Trying to pivot. Trying to stop overthinking. Trying to befriend my fear. Trying to reinvent myself. Trying to not feel like I’d fallen behind.
I thought:
That I needed a flawless plan to rebuild.
That I should be hustling harder, networking better, being savvier.
That if I was struggling, I just wasn’t doing it right.
And while I knew I wasn’t the only one—that’s why I started Laid Off Life in the first place—something about seeing the stats made the truth undeniable.
This isn’t just a ME problem. This is a WE problem.
This is a broken system. And what we’re experiencing is not failure—it’s fallout. A creative class has been disassembled. These aren’t just jobs lost. They’re careers. Futures. Industries that are eating their own. But here’s the lightbulb moment I had this week:
The question I am asking myself shouldn’t be “What am I going to do next?” It should be: What are WE going to do next?
Media isn’t the only industry in flux. Publishing, tech, education, government—it’s all shifting beneath our feet. The old models are breaking. And maybe they were always broken. But this isn’t just a story of collapse. It’s a story of potential.
What if this isn’t an ending, but a beginning? What if all this disruption is actually a collective invitation to reinvent—not just as individuals, but as a community? What could we create if we stopped trying to rebuild the old world—and started imagining something better?
I don’t have any answers. But, at this point, I know one thing for sure: I’m not going to find them alone.
So I’ll leave you with this question to ponder: What should WE build together?
Think about it. Hit reply. Drop a comment. Forward this to someone else in flux.
Because there are more of us than we think—and what we need are some radical new ideas.
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Hiring managers in media need to get over their rockstar syndrome and ONLY hire from the pool of laid-off or unemployed people, because there are tons of rockstars in that pool. What you said about the industry eating their own is correct. And if these publications and outlets still haven't solved their capital problem, then their rockstar hiring strategy isn't exactly working, is it? They might as well choose an equally talented laid-off person.