If you want to stay off the spreadsheet when Finance says “cut 10 %,” you need to become Un-Layoff-Able—the person whose departure would punch an immediate hole in revenue, innovation, or customer trust.
The U.S. economy is not only shedding jobs at a record rate; it is shedding more jobs than it is supposed to. It’s bad enough that the unemployment rate has doubled in only a year and a half and one out of six construction workers is out of work.
The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?