Holiday Layoffs Surge: Executives Pocket Bonuses

Man gets kicked by oversized shoe on spring.

Three in ten U.S. companies are quietly circling the calendar days between Thanksgiving and New Year’s as the perfect moment to fire people and dodge paying them what they’re owed.

Story Snapshot

Roughly one-third of U.S. companies plan layoffs between mid-November and December 31, 2025.
Most employers admit those cuts could wait until after the holidays but choose not to.
Many firms time layoffs to avoid bonuses, unused PTO payouts, and to dress up new-year balance sheets.
AI now helps decide who loses a job, while executive bonuses remain largely protected.

Holiday layoffs as a deliberate financial tactic

Resume.org surveyed 1,008 U.S. business leaders in November and found that about 30–31% of companies plan to lay off employees between mid-November and December 31, 2025. These are not last-minute emergencies. Among those planning cuts, 57% are aiming between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 43% between Christmas and New Year’s, and nearly a third even before Thanksgiving. Sixteen percent say they will cut people before 2026 but have not pinned down the exact date.

Executives give reasons that sound clinical on paper and cold-blooded in practice. Seventy-four percent cite cost-cutting before the new financial quarter, 42% say they want to avoid bonus payouts, and 35% aim to avoid paying out unused PTO. That is not “we had no choice.” That is balance-sheet engineering. For a conservative who believes in free markets but also fair dealing, this raises a simple question: if you owe someone compensation they earned, should timing games erase that obligation?

Executives admit the pain is optional, then press ahead

The most damning detail is not the number of layoffs, but the confession about timing. Over a third of leaders say the cuts “definitely” could have waited, and 40% say they “probably” could have waited until after the holidays. They are not insisting the company collapses without December terminations; they are acknowledging a choice and still choosing a period when families face the heaviest emotional and financial load of the year.

Historically, many employers treated holiday-season layoffs as bad etiquette, something HR Brew describes as a Y2K-era trend now making a comeback. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 71,321 job cuts announced in November 2025 alone, up 24% from a year earlier, with restructuring the top stated reason. That suggests a mindset shift: reputational risk now looks smaller than the perceived financial upside of “getting it over with” before January.

AI, severance gaps, and the widening executive-worker divide

The survey shows how technology and incentives intersect. Sixty-nine percent of companies use AI to identify roles for elimination, and 66% use AI in the layoff process. Algorithms crunch data, but people still decide the rules they follow. If leadership feeds in targets focused narrowly on short-term cost, no one should be surprised when the machine spits out “cut people now” rather than “tighten executive perks” or “delay the reorg until after Christmas.”

On the human side of the ledger, only 58% of companies say all laid-off workers will receive severance, 35% say only some will, and 6% say none will receive any. On the executive side, 82% of firms say executives will receive bonuses this year, even as holiday cuts go forward. CFO.com bluntly notes that CFO bonuses are “likely safe” despite incoming layoffs. From a common-sense, right-of-center view, this is not about envying success; it is about incentives that reward leaders for trimming payroll while insulating their own rewards from the pain they impose.

Restructuring in a “strong” labor market and what it signals

All this unfolds against a backdrop where weekly jobless claims sit at a three-year low, about 191,000 for the week ending November 29, 2025, even as announced layoffs rise. That combination suggests many workers may find new roles relatively quickly, at least in the near term. But it also signals that corporate America is front-loading restructuring, automation, and AI adoption, preparing for turbulence before it fully appears in headline unemployment numbers.

Conservatives often argue that markets punish short-sighted leadership. The question now is whether boards and investors see holiday-timed layoffs that dodge bonuses and PTO as disciplined stewardship or lazy cost-cutting that erodes trust and loyalty. Kara Dennison of Resume.org notes that year-end is when companies finalize budgets, reassess headcount, and tie up loose ends, making it operationally attractive for cuts. But attractive to whom? Not to the line worker blindsided days before Christmas.