Someone in my network moved his family across the country for a new job last year. New schools. New mortgage. A whole life uprooted on the strength of an offer letter. He was laid off eleven weeks later.
He is not the exception. I’m part of a network of senior executives navigating this job market, and I’ve heard this exact story so many times it has stopped shocking me. That should scare all of us.
American business has quietly rewritten its deal with workers. And a generation has been taking notes.
Start with the exit. Most U.S. employment is “at will.” A company can end your career anytime, for almost any reason, with no notice. That’s legal, and America sets no severance requirement. It’s brutal when a job search runs for months.
And the health insurance? It can end the same day. Not in 30 days, that day. For a client mid-cancer-treatment, or a parent covering a medically complex kid, that isn’t a policy detail. It’s a trapdoor. COBRA is supposed to be the bridge, but in 2025 the full family premium averaged nearly $27,000 a year or about $2,250 a month (Kaiser Family Foundation). This is why people don’t experience a layoff as a business decision. They experience it as abandonment.
