Are marginalized groups more likely to be laid off?

Just in 2024 alone, there's been a whopping 60,000+ layoffs in the tech industry. This is following 262,000 in 2023 and another 154,000 in 2022 reported by Tech Crunch. Not only does this have a significant impact on the economy and tech industry, it also poses a serious issue to the workers involved, which are almost never mentioned in the media.

I myself have been laid off twice in two years working in the beverage industry as a software engineer. Despite your initial knee-jerk reaction, there was pretty much no warning on why I would be laid off, and I think I'm not alone in that sentiment. Certainly, businesses tend to make certain decisions that warn of a layoff, like bringing in new leadership from private equity or hiring their fourth CFO in a year. However, are there other factors that might contribute to an individuals likelihood to be laid off? That's what I'd like to explore today.

The short answer? Most definitely. I'm not the first or the last to discuss how bias has seeped into one part of the job market when it's removed from another. Just when we've spent so much time working on removing bias from the hiring process, companies decide to bring it back in the "firing" process. That being said, let's approach the situation holistically and discuss two key areas of the layoff schema: DEI hiring practices and corporate downsizing methodology.

Warehouse logic doesn't work here

As of late, there's been a big push to bring in more diverse talent into the workforce. Colorado, for example, has recently passed a law in August of 2024 prohibiting discrimination in employment practices based on hairstyles commonly associated with one's race. This is great, but this also creates an interesting situation where companies are, only recently, catching up to meet any internal initiatives or federal requirements they have to contend with. That puts the diverse talent in a unique position where they are just recently hopping into the company at large.

How does this play into layoffs? Well, according to SHRM, one of the common methodologies of determining layoffs is a concept called "last in, first out." Much unlike the warehouse concept of "first in, first out", this method essentially makes it so employees who are hired more recently are more likely to be laid off. I believe the idea is that a newer employee is less likely to be impactful to the organization. Guess who's more likely to be recently hired? The same people targeted by DEI initiatives to be included in the company within the past year or two. An unintentional side effect, but one worth keeping in mind.

Does quality get you the right quantity?

Another approach to the problem is to base the layoffs off of "performance." This obviously has an issue if the companies' rating system isn't robust or well-defined. It will work for objective measurement if you work in something like sales, where a clear number of customers, dollar volume, and other factors in the process can be identified. Would this work though if there's a clear disparity between race and the rating of their performance?

Take the New York Times as a prevalent example. In 2022, the News Guild of New York identified that being Hispanic, Black, or Asian reduced the chances of guild members getting a high rating by nearly 60%, while 90% of the top rated members were white. Consider a 100-person company with similar issues. If we cut off the lower ten 10% of the company to meet a budget goal, it's very likely those BIPOC individuals would be affected.

Other Demographics

I've focused a little on the BIPOC experience, but what about other groups, like women, non-binary, LGBTQIA+, and disability? You'll not be surprised to know that the trends are typically similar or worse. Here's a handful of sources on the subject that I implore you to read more on.

Is there a solution?

I believe there is, but it's not as clear cut as implementing a single solution. Realistically, a good team employs a combination of methods to determine layoffs. Perhaps you can rank these individuals and score them based on multiple factors, like tenure, performance, and other needed factors to consider. As long as the criteria is objective and measurable, I don't think there's much issue.

Transparency into this criteria is a double-edged sword as well. On one hand, you put some more respect towards the potential employees affected by this process. On the other, you may run into push back as a result of the criteria, and people trying to game the criteria where possible.

Overall, there's not a "silver bullet" on how best to approach the problem. As a software engineer looking into the hiring process from the outside, I only have so much context on the way HR professionals look at these things internally.

I'd love to talk with more people on the topic, so feel free to reach out at [email protected]. Maybe there's a part of the equation I'm missing to make a more holistic recommendation. Thanks!

Here's a picture of Cha Cha after a visit to his grandparents.