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Companies are trimming their workforces, and many of them are focusing their cuts on middle management.
The number of managers dropped 6.1% between May 2022 to May 2025, according to research from Live Data Technologies and reported by The Wall Street Journal, while executive-level roles fell 4.6%. Estee Lauder and Match Group recently said they each cut around 20% of their managers, while UPS, Citigroup, Amazon and Google have all worked to shrink their management teams.
Small and midsize businesses are part of the trend, too: Supervisors at these orgs now have an average of six direct reports — twice as many as they did five years ago, according to data from Gusto and reported by Bloomberg.
As a result, a growing share of laid-off managers are fighting for a shrinking pool of opportunities.
"I haven't been on the job market for two years, so I didn't realize how tumultuous it is," says Tiffany Fuentes, 33, in Fort Mohave, Arizona, who was laid off from her job as a head of recruitment in June when her tech company cut 50% of its staff.
Though she did plenty of hiring in her previous role, being on the other side has been a surprise. "I didn't realize there were so many job seekers with the same degrees [and] employment history that I have, and that it would be this difficult to find employment," she says.
When she recently wrote on LinkedIn about the challenges of her search, she received messages from people along the lines of, "you've only been at this for two weeks; I've been at this for a year," Fuentes says. "It's really heartbreaking to see so many people in the workforce all at the same time trying to find those jobs."
Even when she does get through to schedule an interview, the experience hasn't been good.
She recently agreed to an interview for a job that would be a step back in her career, but the interviewer never showed up to the video call. "For me to get dressed and ready and be on the call really excited with my research," Fuentes says, "when that person doesn't show up, it's a little gut wrenching." Fuentes says she never heard back from the employer.
Managers are worried about their job security and taking new roles with a pay cut
Though not ideal, Fuentes has come to the understanding that she may have to "be realistic" and take a lower title and salary in today's market.
A growing share of today's job seekers are taking roles with a pay cut, which is highest among managers (22%) and managers transitioning to individual contributor roles (32%), according to Glassdoor data. And middle managers are worried about their job security: Employee confidence for mid-level employees declined 4.5 percentage points from the last year.
Job security concerns are leading some to look for a new job in case they're suddenly let go.
That's the case for a 27-year-old product director for a startup in Chicago, who declined to be named to protect her job security.
She currently has a full-time job but has been actively looking for a new one for two months because she feels underpaid and is concerned about her company's future. "[I'm] trying to make sure that I'm not in a position that a lot of people are right now, which sucks, where they're just laid off and then s--- out of luck."
She says she's had four direct reports and was a skip-level manager to some 80 people. Working at a startup means her title doesn't necessarily reflect all the responsibilities she's taken on over a condensed period of time, though. That makes it hard to transfer her title and experience to other roles, she says.
In a tight hiring market, she says, there's little chance of her landing an interview when her experience doesn't match a job description to a T.
For roles she feels would be a next step in her career, the job ads show "you need to have 12 years of experience, and the salary is awesome, but it's almost like that would be a VP level," she says, "and the role right underneath that is non-existent."
Manager cuts could impact culture and engagement
Leadership experts say effective middle management can be a powerful tool for businesses to keep employees engaged, satisfied and happy with their work and their employer. Without it, employees can feel disconnected with senior leadership and the mission of their work, which can lead to burnout and attrition.
PR professional Stacey Dillon agrees. Dillon, 47, quit her last managerial job in the beginning of December 2024 and was optimistic about finding a new one when she started looking a month later. She'd previously been heavily recruited to new gigs, and she'd just moved from Salt Lake City to the Phoenix area, where she'd heard there was a booming job market.
Dillon says the difference in her job search today compared with her last role, which she landed in 2021, couldn't be more different. The last time around, she says she was hired in two weeks. "This time the process has felt longer, more mysterious and ambiguous, and far more competitive."
"I've seen well aligned jobs disappear overnight, even retracted, outsourced or restructured," she says.
Her experience has been frustrating: She was recruited to apply for a job that had been vacant for six months and completed a five-hour assessment for it. She says she never heard back but sees in the online system that the job is still open and her application is still under consideration.
For another role, Dillon says she was recruited to apply but was ghosted and hasn't heard back for about two months.
The biggest lesson she's learned is to focus on the human side of the job search.
"In this job market I'm reminded that career transitions aren't just logical — they're emotional— and human connection has become a core part of how I job search," she says.
As such, she says networking has been crucial to get job leads, referrals and contract work for the time being.
With constant news of middle management layoffs, Dillon thinks businesses are at a turning point: "Middle management is often misunderstood, but it's essential, not just for operations, but for culture, mentorship and wisdom."
"Middle managers are so uniquely positioned to humanize leadership, to connect strategy to people," Dillon says. "I hope organizations will continue to invest in those roles, not just as an administrative necessity, but as the cultural and strategic backbone to teams."
Companies plan to downsize with the help of AI
Companies tend to lay people off during recessions but in recent years have trimmed their workforces even as they report high sales and profits. Ultimately, many bosses are looking to do more with less, and they're hoping artificial intelligence will help them do that.
Some 41% of employers plan to downsize their workforce by 2030 with the help of AI automation, according to a January World Economic Forum survey.
Bob Friedland is open to tech innovations in the workplace but feels replacing middle managers with AI would be a bad business move.
"When you're dealing with a CEO, they don't expect to have to double-check the work; they expect the work to come to them done and ready," says Friedland, 50, of Little Falls, New Jersey. Junior employees may not have the skillsets to ensure work done with AI is entirely accurate, he says. "So if you remove that middle layer, you're actually removing an important piece that can act as that gut check."
As the public relations professional sees it, "Will AI speed us up? Yes. Can it replace certain functions? Yes. Can it replace every middle manager? Probably not."
Friedland, who's been job-hunting for two years since his director-level role was cut in a restructuring, is optimistic that businesses are still hiring for middle manager roles. But he also faces a lot of competition from candidates who may not actually be qualified.
In his last role, any post he hired for often saw 1,000 applications, not all of them well suited for the vacancy, as candidates played a "numbers game" and mass applied to openings, Friedland says.
Friedland says he's intentionally applied to some 750 roles during his search, which shows him "there really are a lot of opportunities."
"There's a lot of movement in the industry," he says. "But it's just impossible to get seen."
In the meantime, Friedland started his own consultancy to do freelance work and earn an income. The biggest upside to his job-searching journey is that he uses his time to invest in his network, which has led to a few interviews and landed him clients for his business.
On a personal note, he's been able to focus on his relationships, home projects and hobbies, "which is not something I'd ever really done before. I was very much a workaholic."
Companies are trimming their workforces, and many of them are focusing their cuts on middle management.
The number of managers dropped 6.1% between May 2022 to May 2025, according to research from Live Data Technologies and reported by The Wall Street Journal, while executive-level roles fell 4.6%. Estee Lauder and Match Group recently said they each cut around 20% of their managers, while UPS, Citigroup, Amazon and Google have all worked to shrink their management teams.
Small and midsize businesses are part of the trend, too: Supervisors at these orgs now have an average of six direct reports — twice as many as they did five years ago, according to data from Gusto and reported by Bloomberg.
As a result, a growing share of laid-off managers are fighting for a shrinking pool of opportunities.
"I haven't been on the job market for two years, so I didn't realize how tumultuous it is," says Tiffany Fuentes, 33, in Fort Mohave, Arizona, who was laid off from her job as a head of recruitment in June when her tech company cut 50% of its staff.
Though she did plenty of hiring in her previous role, being on the other side has been a surprise. "I didn't realize there were so many job seekers with the same degrees [and] employment history that I have, and that it would be this difficult to find employment," she says.
When she recently wrote on LinkedIn about the challenges of her search, she received messages from people along the lines of, "you've only been at this for two weeks; I've been at this for a year," Fuentes says. "It's really heartbreaking to see so many people in the workforce all at the same time trying to find those jobs."
Even when she does get through to schedule an interview, the experience hasn't been good.
She recently agreed to an interview for a job that would be a step back in her career, but the interviewer never showed up to the video call. "For me to get dressed and ready and be on the call really excited with my research," Fuentes says, "when that person doesn't show up, it's a little gut wrenching." Fuentes says she never heard back from the employer.
Managers are worried about their job security and taking new roles with a pay cut
Though not ideal, Fuentes has come to the understanding that she may have to "be realistic" and take a lower title and salary in today's market.
A growing share of today's job seekers are taking roles with a pay cut, which is highest among managers (22%) and managers transitioning to individual contributor roles (32%), according to Glassdoor data. And middle managers are worried about their job security: Employee confidence for mid-level employees declined 4.5 percentage points from the last year.
Job security concerns are leading some to look for a new job in case they're suddenly let go.
That's the case for a 27-year-old product director for a startup in Chicago, who declined to be named to protect her job security.
She currently has a full-time job but has been actively looking for a new one for two months because she feels underpaid and is concerned about her company's future. "[I'm] trying to make sure that I'm not in a position that a lot of people are right now, which sucks, where they're just laid off and then s--- out of luck."
She says she's had four direct reports and was a skip-level manager to some 80 people. Working at a startup means her title doesn't necessarily reflect all the responsibilities she's taken on over a condensed period of time, though. That makes it hard to transfer her title and experience to other roles, she says.
In a tight hiring market, she says, there's little chance of her landing an interview when her experience doesn't match a job description to a T.
For roles she feels would be a next step in her career, the job ads show "you need to have 12 years of experience, and the salary is awesome, but it's almost like that would be a VP level," she says, "and the role right underneath that is non-existent."
Manager cuts could impact culture and engagement
Leadership experts say effective middle management can be a powerful tool for businesses to keep employees engaged, satisfied and happy with their work and their employer. Without it, employees can feel disconnected with senior leadership and the mission of their work, which can lead to burnout and attrition.
PR professional Stacey Dillon agrees. Dillon, 47, quit her last managerial job in the beginning of December 2024 and was optimistic about finding a new one when she started looking a month later. She'd previously been heavily recruited to new gigs, and she'd just moved from Salt Lake City to the Phoenix area, where she'd heard there was a booming job market.
Dillon says the difference in her job search today compared with her last role, which she landed in 2021, couldn't be more different. The last time around, she says she was hired in two weeks. "This time the process has felt longer, more mysterious and ambiguous, and far more competitive."
"I've seen well aligned jobs disappear overnight, even retracted, outsourced or restructured," she says.
Her experience has been frustrating: She was recruited to apply for a job that had been vacant for six months and completed a five-hour assessment for it. She says she never heard back but sees in the online system that the job is still open and her application is still under consideration.
For another role, Dillon says she was recruited to apply but was ghosted and hasn't heard back for about two months.
The biggest lesson she's learned is to focus on the human side of the job search.
"In this job market I'm reminded that career transitions aren't just logical — they're emotional— and human connection has become a core part of how I job search," she says.
As such, she says networking has been crucial to get job leads, referrals and contract work for the time being.
With constant news of middle management layoffs, Dillon thinks businesses are at a turning point: "Middle management is often misunderstood, but it's essential, not just for operations, but for culture, mentorship and wisdom."
"Middle managers are so uniquely positioned to humanize leadership, to connect strategy to people," Dillon says. "I hope organizations will continue to invest in those roles, not just as an administrative necessity, but as the cultural and strategic backbone to teams."
Companies plan to downsize with the help of AI
Companies tend to lay people off during recessions but in recent years have trimmed their workforces even as they report high sales and profits. Ultimately, many bosses are looking to do more with less, and they're hoping artificial intelligence will help them do that.
Some 41% of employers plan to downsize their workforce by 2030 with the help of AI automation, according to a January World Economic Forum survey.
Bob Friedland is open to tech innovations in the workplace but feels replacing middle managers with AI would be a bad business move.
"When you're dealing with a CEO, they don't expect to have to double-check the work; they expect the work to come to them done and ready," says Friedland, 50, of Little Falls, New Jersey. Junior employees may not have the skillsets to ensure work done with AI is entirely accurate, he says. "So if you remove that middle layer, you're actually removing an important piece that can act as that gut check."
As the public relations professional sees it, "Will AI speed us up? Yes. Can it replace certain functions? Yes. Can it replace every middle manager? Probably not."
Friedland, who's been job-hunting for two years since his director-level role was cut in a restructuring, is optimistic that businesses are still hiring for middle manager roles. But he also faces a lot of competition from candidates who may not actually be qualified.
In his last role, any post he hired for often saw 1,000 applications, not all of them well suited for the vacancy, as candidates played a "numbers game" and mass applied to openings, Friedland says.
Friedland says he's intentionally applied to some 750 roles during his search, which shows him "there really are a lot of opportunities."
"There's a lot of movement in the industry," he says. "But it's just impossible to get seen."
In the meantime, Friedland started his own consultancy to do freelance work and earn an income. The biggest upside to his job-searching journey is that he uses his time to invest in his network, which has led to a few interviews and landed him clients for his business.
On a personal note, he's been able to focus on his relationships, home projects and hobbies, "which is not something I'd ever really done before. I was very much a workaholic."
