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.

Colin Saint-Vil got his money education at the dim sum cart, over a steamy plate of pork buns and turnip cake.

A friend offered to pick up the whole tab on her credit card, “for the points.” At the time, six years ago, “for the points” meant nothing to Saint-Vil, now a 30-year-old planning manager in Brooklyn, so he pressed for more details. They lingered over the dim sum meal as a larger conversation unfolded about annual percentage rates, credit-card debt, payment schedules and more.

Millennials and members of Gen Z prefer to seek financial advice from each other than from parents or from financial professionals. They don’t like overwhelming spreadsheets and marketing material written in seemingly foreign languages. They don’t trust big banks and institutions trying to sell them on investment strategies—as many were raised around the late 2000s financial-crisis. And, they are not wrong: There is a lot to be learned from comparing numbers with peers—from sharing salaries to talking out big decisions like home or car purchases.

Saint-Vil said when his father was his age, he had already begun investing in real estate, but with property prices now so high and mortgage rates only just beginning to fall, he said he couldn’t imagine being able to follow in his father’s footsteps. He, like many millennials and Gen Z-ers, describe their finances as “fairly good” these days, though they hold a negative picture of the greater economy, according to a new poll of 18 to 29-year-olds from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School.

Millennials are still reeling from the impact of back-to-back recessions, all while large bank closures and investing scams dominate the headlines. Younger people report a feeling of “financial avoidance” exacerbated by high inflation and the pandemic-era budgeting.

As of June 2023, Gallup polling revealed a historically low faith in U.S. institutions, with younger generations voicing high skepticism. According to Gallup, only 9% of respondents aged 18 to 34 expressed “a great deal” of confidence in banks; meanwhile, 47% and 28% said they have “some” or “very little,” respectively.

But when it comes to winning back young consumers, these same financial institutions haven’t quite given up, and are rolling out new outreach programs and robo advisors, some of which have helped bridge a connection with Gen Z and millennials, said Keith Niedermeier, clinical professor of marketing at Indiana University. But many young people still say they prefer do-it-yourself investing platforms like Robinhood and Acorns over traditional advisers at more established wealth-management firms.

Andrew Ragusa, a real-estate broker based on Long Island, blamed the twin problems of low housing inventory and high home prices for postponing younger buyers’ ownership. The median age of a first-time home buyer in the U.S. is 35-years old as of 2023, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. That is slightly down from an record high of 36 in 2022, but still two years older than the median age in 2021, which is representative of an ageing first-time buyer trend.

When he talks with younger clients now, he detects a gloomy sentiment. “They try to be optimistic, but the overall sentiment is ‘This is supposed to be the American dream: we get a house and we get some financial security and I just have to have faith it will all work out in the end.’ But they don’t have faith it will.”

Fear and shame around being able to buy or accomplish as much as one’s parents might have financially can crop up when millennials talk to elders about their financial frustrations, said Jodi Kaus, director of Kansas State University’s student financial planning centre, Powercat Financial. She’s found that lessons and advice from friends are often more constructive.

Kaus leads a peer-to-peer financial planning centre that pairs up students to work through financial issues. She works to pair people with similar backgrounds: graduate students with graduate students or international students with international students. Talking with someone only a few years removed from your current situation means you’re better able to internalize the messages and execute on their advice, Kaus said.

“Early on, parents even say ‘Are you sure students can help my child?’” she said. “And I say ‘I am more than confident that they can help each other.’

Sharing money tips and financial know-how with your friends doesn’t only benefit the asker, Kaus said. In the Kansas State University peer-to-peer group, the advice giver also learns a lot from their own position, because sharing their story and bonding with a peer helps them to build their own confidence and belief in their financial acumen.

Lindsay Clark, a 34-year-old director of external affairs in Washington, D.C., recalls one lesson she shared with a friend carrying student loans from pharmacy school. Clark works at Savi, a student loan platform, and she offered to cook her friend dinner while they sorted through his loan repayment options. Long after they’d cleaned their dinner plates, they sat together at Clark’s kitchen island, lingering over a plate of homemade hummus and chatting about everything from financial goals to Costco card benefits.

“Those conversations blossom from the transparency, and the visibility makes both people feel really good,” she said. “That creates better relationships overall.”

When you’re talking about money issues with friends, Clark said, you’re not artificially inflating your salary or pretending to know more than you do. And most important, you’re not worried about their ulterior motives.

“You feel safe in that conversation, knowing their intentions are good and they’re not trying to make money off of you,” she said. “And that’s going to lead to better results, because we’re working with the reality here.”

Skepticism of pronounced experts and criticism of established financial institutions is especially common among millennials and Gen Z, Neidermeier said. Studies show people across generations are much likelier to take a friend or colleague’s recommendation to heart over that of a faceless institution, he said; people who spend time on social media just have a greater opportunity to source those answers and field questions.

“What people say to each other over the picket fence is what is the most influential,” he said.

At a certain point, however, talking solely to friends and peers for your financial lessons can be very limiting, said Sarah Behr, founder of Simplify Financial Planning in San Francisco. Relying on your social circle can also put a strain on those relationships; no one wants to be responsible for your disappointment when a financial decision that worked out well for them doesn’t fit as well in your own life.

Behr recommends tuning into your own emotional reactions when assessing peer advice: does the road map they followed align with your own financial values? Does it put pressure on you to live outside your means or challenge your personal risk tolerance? If the answer doesn’t feel clear, that could be a time to outsource to a financial professional who has no emotional connection to you or your financial status.

“‘People have been telling me do this, but I just don’t know if it’s the right thing for me’—I get a lot of calls like that,” said Behr.

Saint-Vil said he and his friends share tips on what high-yield savings accounts offer the best rates, and when he did his credit card research, he chose a card recommended by a friend. When it comes time to work with a financial adviser or even one day a wealth manager, he’ll likely work with someone recommended through a peer. Behr said close to 90% of her business comes by way of client referrals.

Since that first conversation over dim sum, Saint-Vil has thrown his own card onto the table at meals and shared his knowledge with other pals who look confused.

“I have a real wide range of friends who are in many different financial places, but I would say a rising tide lifts all ships,” he said.

Julia Carpenter is the co-author, with Bourree Lam, of The Wall Street Journal’s “The New Rules of Money: A Playbook for Planning Your Financial Future,” a personal-finance workbook published this week by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group.

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

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

Millennials and Gen Z are turning to peers instead of professionals for financial advice. They don’t trust banks, and they are tired of information overload.