The layoff season has begun—and no one is safe

Abdel El Ayyadi
4 days ago
4 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

Something shifted in July. Not in the markets. Not in politics. But in the boardrooms of the world’s most powerful companies. This month, Intel, Walmart, and Booking.com announced major layoffs—thousands of roles slashed, many without warning, from teams once considered untouchable. But this isn’t crisis management. It’s controlled demolition—a cold recalibration of what labor means in modern business.

The new logic of layoffs

Layoffs used to follow a playbook. Revenue drops. Profits shrink. Heads roll. Not anymore.

Today’s layoffs are different. They’re happening in profitable companies. They’re targeting strategic teams, not dead weight. They come not from desperation—but from design.

And July 2025 marks a turning point. This is the month the gloves came off.

Intel: Restructuring at the roots

Intel didn’t just trim its workforce—it took a knife to its own foundation. Over 6,000 U.S. jobs were cut this month alone, confirmed via WARN filings in California, Oregon, Arizona, and Texas. That number doubles earlier estimates and lands squarely on high-value roles: engineers, foundry workers, and technical managers. These weren’t support staff—they were the builders.

It follows a broader July layoff wave where 15–20% of global foundry staff were let go, potentially totaling over 10,000 jobs globally.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan calls it a move toward operational simplicity. But many see something harsher: the unraveling of Intel’s ambition to lead in domestic chip manufacturing. The very units once championed as central to Intel’s future are now casualties of its reset.

Internal messages described the move as “difficult but necessary.” Translation: no room for loyalty in the new Intel.

This isn’t just downsizing—it’s a philosophical pivot. Intel is moving from scale to speed. From factory to framework. The only question is whether the talent it just lost will be what it needs to rebuild.

Walmart: Efficiency over empathy

At the other end of the corporate spectrum, Walmart—the world’s largest private employer—continued its quiet dismantling of middle-tier roles. A leaked memo confirmed hundreds of layoffs this July, cutting through store-support functions, market coordinators, and training academy staff.

This follows a May round of 1,500 job cuts, mostly in tech, advertising, and fulfillment.

Walmart’s public messaging is wrapped in calm: employees are being offered “new coaching opportunities.” But inside, it’s clear what’s happening: the company is eliminating human infrastructure—replacing it with centralized systems, dashboards, and software-led supervision.

Support, training, and regional oversight are being digitized. It’s not retail apocalypse. It’s retail automation, and it’s coming for the people who once made Walmart local.

Booking.com: When performance doesn’t protect you

Perhaps the most chilling example comes from Booking.com, which announced nearly 1,000 layoffs globally—including hundreds in Amsterdam—despite a 37% increase in profit, hitting $5.9 billion.

Let that sink in: record-breaking earnings and still the jobs are gone.

“We’re not cutting because we’re weak,” a senior executive said in an internal meeting. “We’re cutting because we’re bloated.”

Translation: bureaucracy has no safe harbor, even in growth. In my earlier article, When employee silence breaks, I explored how Booking’s culture enabled silence, fear, and blind loyalty to hierarchy—until leadership decided those very layers were the problem.

The layoff wasn’t financial—it was symbolic. Booking.com is tearing down its own structure to rebuild something leaner, faster, and less political.

But for the employees left behind, one truth remains: performance doesn’t protect you when the org chart becomes a liability.

What is “Layoff Season,” really?

The term “layoff season” doesn’t appear in earnings reports or corporate memos—but it exists. It’s the unofficial window—typically in Q1 or Q3—when large companies conduct sweeping layoffs to reset headcount, restructure teams, or signal discipline to investors before the next financial cycle.

It’s not always triggered by poor performance. Often, it’s tied to strategic shifts, leadership changes, M&A activity, or pressure from shareholders to improve margins. And when one major company cuts jobs, others often follow—creating a cascade effect across industries.

July 2025 fits this pattern perfectly. These are not isolated layoffs. This is the beginning of a coordinated downsizing phase.

Layoffs as strategy—not survival

What makes these layoffs dangerous is not just their scale—it’s their intentionality.

Company	Confirmed Layoffs	Roles Affected	Strategic Signal
Intel	6,000+ U.S., 10,000+ global	Engineers, foundry workers, managers	Collapse of legacy ops. Lean-first manufacturing.
Walmart	100s (July), 1,500+ (May)	Store-support, training, market roles	Regional flattening. Automation over human oversight.
Booking.com	~1,000 global	Admin, support, mid-level management	Bureaucracy purge. Simplification at any cost.

These aren’t reactions. They’re resets. Each company is telling the market: we’ve learned to grow fast, now we’re learning to shrink smarter.

What happens now?

If you think this is the peak, you’re wrong. Layoffs will continue—not because profits collapse, but because leaders want speed, shareholders want margin, and org charts have become liabilities.

Expect August and September to follow suit. Expect more companies to pre-emptively downsize while earnings are still strong. Expect more “performance-driven” restructures.

And above all: expect the rules of loyalty, safety, and value to keep shifting.

Final thought: Layoffs have become a management tool

This isn’t economic turbulence—it’s an ideology shift. Layoffs have become a form of managerial performance. The modern executive doesn’t just build—they cut.

For the workforce, the new message is sobering:

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, how good you are, or how well we’re doing. If you’re in the way of our next strategy—you're gone.

The layoff season has started. But this time, it’s not the storm. It’s the strategy.