A layoff (in British and American English) or retrenchment in (South African English) is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or (more commonly) a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as when certain positions are no longer necessary or when a business slow-down occurs. Originally, layoff referred exclusively to a temporary interruption in work, but nowadays it can also mean and more commonly means the permanent elimination of a position in both British and US English, requiring the addition of "temporary" to specify the original meaning. In the UK, permanent termination due to elimination of a position is usually called redundancy. Laid off workers or displaced workers are workers who have lost or left their jobs because their employer has closed or moved, there was insufficient work for them to do, or their position or shift was abolished (Borbely, 2011). Many synonyms such as downsizing exist, most of which are euphemisms or doublespeak and more abstract descriptions of the process, most of which can also be used for more inclusive processes than that of reducing the number of employees. Downsizing in a company is defined to involve the reduction of employees in a workforce. Downsizing in companies was a popular practice during the 1980s and early 1990s as it was seen as a way to deliver better shareholder value as it helps to reduce costs (downsizing, 2015). Indeed, recent research on downsizing in the U.S., UK, and Japan suggests that downsizing is being regarded by management as one of the preferred routes to turning around declining organisations, cutting costs, and improving organisational performance, most often as a cost-cutting measure.

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