The Generation Shaped By Layoffs
For young people, layoffs are now part of the fabric of working life. It’s taking a deep toll on their psyches and careers.
Jayme Brown always knew she wanted to teach; her mother and grandfather were both teachers and she knew she was good with kids. But when she got to San Francisco in 2013 for an unpaid internship tutoring at a nonprofit, she needed to make money to live in an expensive city and also pay off her student loans. Brown got a job folding clothes at a secondhand clothing startup and was eventually promoted to her first full-time, salaried job as a customer service representative. Brown had health insurance for the first time, ate her meals at the office, and hung out with her coworkers on the weekends. She liked her work; she said it “rooted” her. But less than nine months later the company was acquired by eBay and Brown got an email on a Sunday night for a 9 a.m. Monday meeting. At 23 years old, Brown experienced her first layoff along with some 200 other employees. It wouldn’t be her last.
Brown said she felt like her “future in the city had evaporated.” She bounced around marketing jobs at Silicon Valley startups before finding a marketing job at a museum. In 2018, Brown was laid off from the museum. By then she had seen so many friends go through layoffs she had…
