Why companies hire back people they just laid off 

Many of us have heard of “boomerang employees”—someone who leaves a company and later returns—but there’s a newer version showing up in the workplace: the layoff boomerang.

Maybe you’ve seen it yourself. A coworker disappears after a round of cuts, only to show up again a few months later. Same desk. Same job. Sometimes even a bigger paycheck.

According to research done by Dr. Andrea Derler at workforce analytics firm Visier, 5.3% of laid-off employees now get rehired by the same organization after a layoff.

But the most surprising part isn’t the number—it’s that it’s been happening for years.

We just didn’t know. 

“What surprised me the most was that this has been happening for the last several years. The 5.3% isn’t just a recent figure; consistently, organizations seem to be rehiring after layoffs,” she says. 

While it might feel more prevalent now, with AI adding confusion and uncertainty for business leaders, it was happening during the pandemic as well—and maybe even before then.

“Change has always happened,” Derler said. “We’ve always had those crisis moments, but things just come out into the open more nowadays. We have the data.”

So why is this happening? Are companies realizing they let valuable talent go too quickly? And is the rise of AI making this more common?

To find out, Fast Company spoke with Derler about her research, as well as several employees who shared their boomerang experiences anonymously to avoid potential retaliation.

Why layoff boomerangs happen

Many employees who return after a layoff come back within six to 10 months. Derler says that window isn’t random—it lines up with how long it often takes organizations to realize they still need the skills of the people they let go.

Part of the issue is that most companies only plan six to 12 months ahead, which leaves little room for long-term strategy. “Which is not long enough,” Derler says. With such a limited horizon, companies may not fully understand which skills they’re losing during layoffs.

“There’s a lot that gets lost in that time because they don’t have a really good sense of what skills these employees have, that they’re about to let go,” Derler said. “You may be losing employees only because you don’t know what else they could be doing for the company in the meantime.”

By the time companies realize they still need certain skills, six to 12 months may have passed—which coincides with the window in which layoff boomerangs typically occur. “That time window makes sense, because strategic changes and restructuring of a department or a whole business unit takes that long,” Derler says.

In other words, by the time the dust settles, companies often realize they never should’ve let those employees go in the first place. 

Then, they want them back.

The disruption for the employee

Beyond the emotional toll, layoffs disrupt not only the person being let go but entire teams. And according to Derler, layoff boomerangs are often high performers.

“That means you’ve done your best, you’ve performed highly on the scale of performance ratings, and you still got let go. So that’s tremendously traumatic,” Derler says.

But the ripple effect doesn’t stop there.

“Imagine the people on the other end suddenly get this call back and are asked or offered a job back at the company. It’s tremendously disrupting for the teams who are losing colleagues . . . [and] for the person who is actually losing the job,” Derler says.

Even for those who do return, the move isn’t always a long-term solution—it’s often just the next step in navigating an unpredictable job market: “If the person hasn’t found a new job in the meantime, they may come back, but they may not stay long, because they’re really still traumatized for what you did to them a year ago,” Derler says.

One worker described her experience as a layoff boomerang: “When I was first laid off from this company in March 2018, I was completely blindsided—it was my first time ever facing a layoff. The website I was writing for shuttered entirely, so we were all out of a job,” the worker says.

After the site was purchased and relaunched by another company, several of the original employees were rehired. The former employee reached out to a rehire to see if there were opportunities available.

“They were—but on a contractor basis. I was underemployed, freelance is not for the weak, and needed the money. So I agreed to sign on. My pay as a contractor was close to what I was paid when I first worked at the site, but I didn’t have any benefits,” she explains.

After several months working there as a writer and editor, she was brought on officially as a staff member. But a few months later, another round of layoffs hit, and she was let go for the second time.

“I wasn’t intending to stay there longer than I had to—I was applying for other jobs almost the entire time. When I was laid off the second time, I had actually been in the process of interviewing for another job. Thankfully, I got that one, so after a month break in between jobs, I started the new one,” she says.

One Reddit user details their experience as a layoff boomerang. They were let go from a company where they had worked for over six years. 

“I was very loyal, but also know when you work for a company with 350k+ employees that layoffs happen. I left in very good standing and had a stellar reputation there. But head counts get reduced,” they explain. 

Months later, they received an offer to return. “Fast forward to [receiving] an offer from the very company that laid me off in October. Different boss, different department, more pay,” they say.

Another worker has boomeranged back to her old company—kind of, and hopefully.

“I was laid off quite unexpectedly in February. I had been there for 3.5 years and survived at least two other layoffs. As a technical writer, layoffs seldom surprise me. We’re always some of the first cut,” she explains.

The employee did not expect to ever hear from the company again, but a new opportunity emerged unexpectedly, much like the layoff itself. She agreed to join for a three-month contract while the company worked on approval for a permanent headcount in the 2026 budget.

“To be perfectly honest, I’d been out of work for almost 10 months. I was out of unemployment, my savings were gone, and I was borrowing money to pay my rent. That was the real driver for taking the role,” she explains. 

Still, she loved the job and the team, and embraced the chance to contribute. “I poured my soul into building that help center, enabling a chatbot for the help center. It was a real passion project for me. I actually accepted a cut in pay to get my foot in the door with the contract,” she says.

Her team’s positive reaction to her return convinced her that she had made the right choice, and bolstered her confidence that a full-time, permanent position was in her future.

Before considering being a boomerang yourself, Derler advises asking for a reentry interview, or at least considering one. This is where you can have a proper interview with the hiring manager to find out the details of the role. 

Here, you can ask yourself: “How solidly sure is my employer that they need this role filled, that I’m the right person for the role?” 

And that another layoff isn’t on the horizon?

The disruption for the employer

By laying off employees without expecting to bring them back, there are “unintended consequences that organizations may or may not be aware of,” Derler says. If companies understood this, she argues, they could use data to reduce the unnecessary disruption. “If we already know we’re going to rehire some of them, why cause all that disruption—that additional uncertainty?”

The first disruption after the layoff itself is the “turnover contagion.” This happens when one employee is laid off and others leave because they perceive the environment as unstable. Employees often notice that if one team member is let go, it could signal uncertainty for themselves. “This is becoming an uncertain role for me; I’d better look elsewhere,” she explains.

This ripple effect can disrupt teams, hurt productivity, and further increase the financial and operational costs of layoffs.

The second disruption comes in hiring them back. “It’s actually a lot more expensive to rehire people. They earn 3% more than those who have stayed at the company, and they earn 5% more than when they’ve been let go. So the financial implications of the rehiring of previously laid off employees is also not nothing,” Derler says.

When an employer realizes they need to bring someone back, they may have to pay a premium. “It’s possible that these employees have found another role. We don’t know what happens in those six to 10 months before the rehiring,” she explains. 

Layoffs are not collateral damage—and they shouldn’t be viewed that way, Derler says. 

“We’re talking about humans and people and career-minded individuals. It’s a clear failure of workforce planning. It is a failure of leadership strategy setting. It’s a failure to be more long term-minded. It’s a failure to understand the employee skills,” she said.

At the end of the day, layoff boomerangs show just how tricky workforce decisions can be. 

For employees, coming back can feel like a second chance—but it also brings questions about trust, commitment, and whether the role is really solid. For employers, there’s the cost—both money and disruption—to think about. 

Paying attention to skills, data, and planning ahead can help make sure everyone comes out ahead when the workforce shifts.

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