> The MAGA economy: "Looming Layoffs", "rising prices", and "anemic jobs reports"

Call it the era of the looming layoff. At companies from Nike and Starbucks to Meta Platforms, a new playbook for cutting jobs is emerging, in which corporate bosses signal their intentions well in advance and fill in the details later.

The approach lets them telegraph to investors they’re serious about “right-sizing,” and to workers to get prepared. Back in the office, it’s often a recipe for maximum anxiety.

Nike became the latest major company to pre-announce layoffs this way. The sportswear maker told staffers Thursday that it would shrink as part of an effort to speed up its operations—though not until 2027.

“This work will result in fewer roles across Nike,” Chief Executive Elliott Hill wrote in a companywide memo. Nike’s leadership wouldn’t decide on which until next year. Any speculation meanwhile was premature, he added, “because we do not yet know the number of roles or specific locations of positions.”

Other companies have taken a similar approach. Meta told employees in an internal memo in April that it would lay off 10% of its staff, or roughly 8,000 people, and that affected employees would learn their fate May 20. That gave staffers roughly a month to agonize over whether they would be on the list, some of them in public.

Last year, Starbucks told employees in January that it would cut jobs by March. It didn’t initially specify which roles would be impacted, only that in-store teams would be unaffected. A month later, the coffee giant began laying off 1,000 workers.

Likewise, Disney pre-announced 7,000 layoffs in 2023, which played out over multiple rounds. This year, layoffs have already hit divisions like marketing. Now it’s planning a restructuring of its television operation that could result in hundreds of further cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing people close to the matter. The plan might not be finalized before the end of the year, they said.