Corporate layoffs once carried a certain gravity. A company hit a wall, cut costs and announced the decision with visible reluctance. Recent tech job cuts show how far that script has changed, with many companies now announcing record profits in the same breath as job cuts.
Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon have been high-profile examples. However, Amazon has made a move that has raised eyebrows. After cutting more than 30,000 jobs over the past year, the company has been tasking recruiters with contacting former employees about open roles, including positions in AI and cloud. Amazon says boomerang hiring is a longstanding, companywide practice rather than a new program.
There is precedent for this approach. ADP data shows that returning employees made up 35% of US new hires in March 2025, up from 31% a year earlier. Gartner predicts that by 2029, 30% of employees laid off because AI replaced them will need to be rehired.
Although companies may have both the desire and the need to rehire, will the employees they let go be as keen to return? Marcus Mossberger, Chief Market Strategy Officer at Lytiqs, who once had to lay off ten people himself during a reduction in force, is skeptical. His doubts are not about the merits of boomerang hiring itself, but about whether the way companies handle layoffs damages their prospects of bringing former employees back.
What Drives the Cut-Now, Rehire-Later Cycle
Before asking whether this approach will work, we need to ask why companies lay people off only to rehire them later. One answer is that layoffs can signal commercial strength. Mossberger says they "used to be kind of a last resort," but "what's disturbing is that they frequently occur when these organizations are in very solid financial condition." AI supplies the justification. Companies either need to fund AI infrastructure or expect the technology to make people redundant, presenting the cuts as unavoidable.
Companies then take a broad-brush approach to layoffs, only assessing what they need after the cuts have been made. Mossberger traces that failure to poor planning:
"I don't think that a lot of organizations, including Amazon, are doing a very good job of that."
A wave of retirements is expected to hit the global workforce, leaving fewer people available by 2029. Mossberger argues that returning workers will therefore be able to command more money, and that "organizations are literally shooting themselves in the foot by having this short-sighted point of view about what to do with their talent today."
Skills Visibility as the Alternative to Cutting
Mossberger argues that companies should take a different approach before making any decisions about layoffs. Employers should inventory their existing talent, distinguishing skills that quickly become outdated from those that transfer across roles. To do this, Mossberger puts it plainly,
