You’ve Heard of Quiet Quitting. Now Companies Are Quiet Cutting.

Workers are waking up to emails and team-meeting requests with a jarring message: They aren’t fired, but their jobs are gone.

People on the receiving end of these memos describe running through a range of emotions, from relief that they’re still employed to a sense of dread that their bosses secretly want them to leave. They are also facing a labor market that isn’t as robust as a year ago, leaving many to believe that the best option is to stay put and hunt internally for a better fit.

Adidas, Adobe, IBM and Salesforce, among others, have reassigned employees as part of corporate restructurings. Mentions of reassignment, or similar terms, during company earnings calls more than tripled between last August and this month, according to data from AlphaSense, a financial-research platform.

“Reassigning is definitely a huge part of the dynamic right now,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm.

For companies that spent several years—and significant money—to hire top talent, reassigning workers to new roles can be a way to fill jobs vital to future plans while trimming costs associated with old strategies, say human-resources executives.

It can also be a waiting game. Employees to whom it would be costly to pay severance or months of unemployment benefits might decide to leave on their own if they feel stuck in a job they don’t want, executive coaches say.

U.S.-based companies announced 42% fewer job cuts in July than they did in June, Challenger said. July job cuts were also 8% lower than the prior-year period, marking the first time this year that monthly job cuts were lower than in 2022.

In interviews and online forums, many workers said they worried whether their reassignment meant they would eventually be pushed out the door. They also wondered how to work their way out of job purgatory and back into a position they actually want.

“I got the sense that it was like: ‘We appreciate everything you did so we didn’t lay you off, so you can either make the best of this or go find another job somewhere else,’ ” said Matt Conrad, a 34-year-old senior sales-enablement specialist at IBM who went through two reassignments in two years before landing his current role last fall.

In Conrad’s first reassignment in 2021, a manager scheduled a call to notify him that his manager role was eliminated. He was given a new job selling software he had no experience with, a move he said took a toll on his mental health.

Later that year, Conrad found a new job at IBM through a former manager that was better suited to his skill set. Then, in January 2022, that team was eliminated and he was reassigned again. Conrad asked the HR department to help him to find his remote, senior sales-coach role, a process that took six months.

Not quitting when he was reassigned was a matter of principle, he said: “I wouldn’t give in because I was a top performer and it just wasn’t fair.”

IBM didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Getting caught up in a reorganisation can create anxiety for workers, but it’s sometimes a genuine move on the company’s part to avoid letting people go, said Roberta Matuson, an executive coach and adviser to businesses including General Motors and Microsoft on human-resources issues.

“They’re basically signalling to you: ‘Look, this is the only way for me to have a job here for you, I need to reassign you, so wink, wink, if I were you, I would take the assignment,’ ” she said.

Other times, workers are purposefully pushed into jobs management knows they will be miserable in, prompting them to quit.

“They could be putting you out to pasture,” Matuson said.

Signals to look for include reassignment to a job that is far below the pay or skill level you currently have, Matuson said. Other warning signs: Being offered a role that requires relocating when your boss knows moving isn’t a viable option for you, or being reassigned to a division that’s rumoured to be on the chopping block.

Employees suspicious or nervous about a reassignment should ask their managers why, specifically, it’s happening and what the reassignment means for their career path, said Naomi Sutherland, a global lead of talent development with Korn Ferry, a consulting firm. The answers could reveal whether a job transfer is personal.

Without good information, “people are going to fill a void of information with whatever story they’re going to tell themselves,” she said.

Most of the time, there is little legal recourse for workers if their company reassigns them, employment lawyers say.

One exception is when a worker can demonstrate the reassignment was retaliatory, said Angela L. Walker, an employment attorney with Blanchard & Walker in Ann Arbor, Mich. The bar is high, she added. The employee would have to show prior evidence of discriminatory treatment or that they were unfairly singled out.

“I’ve seen lots of examples in my practice where employees are told they’re being let go in a ‘restructuring’ and it turns out that they’re the only one affected, or they’re the only one affected in their group,” Walker said.

Grant Gurewitz, 32, said it took time to adjust to a new role in Seattle earlier this year when his software company eliminated his position as head of growth marketing for employee experience in North America. He was given 24 hours to make a choice between two other jobs, or leave. He picked a global head of growth marketing role that came with more responsibilities but without a pay increase.

He chose to look on the bright side, because a global role probably would’ve been the next position he wanted and it builds on his existing skill set.

“There’s still a lot of runway for me to learn and grow and develop in this role, which is the glass-half-full approach to all of this that’s happened,” he said.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

You’ve Heard of Quiet Quitting. Now Companies Are Quiet Cutting.

Layoffs are down, but employers are still finding ways to cut jobs

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.