An Accountant Writes
Vol 1, Issue 7 | July 2026 
CA Nithya Aravindakshan

Emails arriving abruptly giving less than a day’s notice of termination has become the norm. Sometimes, it is even more brutal – employees arriving for their shifts are marched off to conference rooms and served immediate termination notices. Most companies are no longer insisting employees serve their notice period – the cut is clean and quick even before the employee has a chance to even think about the impact on their EMIs and rent.

From layoffs at large global firms such as Oracle to recent shutdowns and disruptions at companies like Talrop and CorroHealth in Kerala, the details vary, but the abruptness does not. Different companies, different reasons, the same message: what felt secure at 9 a.m. can be over before lunch.

Mass layoffs have high public visibility, resulting in negative PR for companies and jittery markets as the employer brand takes a hit. Such decisions also tap into a deep‑seated investor fear that management itself lacks confidence in its strategy and growth plan. And so, across India’s IT corridors and startup clusters, many companies appear to be choosing a quieter route. Instead of announcing layoffs, they are restructuring through “workforce realignment” programmes, role rationalisation, hiring freezes, transfers, performance filters, and non-renewal of contracts. Employees have started calling this what it feels like in practice: silent layoffs.

Mass layoffs are noisy and expensive. If they meet the relevant thresholds, they often have to be disclosed as restructuring costs, with severance obligations and related payouts drawing attention both in the numbers and around them. Silent layoffs, by contrast, are a balance-sheet strategy wrapped in HR and PR language. They reduce headcount more gradually, with less scrutiny and often with less immediate strain on cash flow. In our first article, we examine how this quiet form of workforce reduction works—and why its invisibility may be precisely what makes it so attractive.

For employees who lose their jobs, it hardly matters whether the exit came through a mass layoff or a silent one; the financial shock is abrupt either way. Entire teams have been let go in a single morning, at companies whose layoffs made headlines this year. People confident in their standing right up until the morning it stopped mattering. Job gone, company insurance soon to follow, severance in hand, and an EMI that has no idea any of this happened. That is why severance deserves to be looked at more coldly than most of us do. Severance pay can soften impact, but it cannot restore certainty. In our second article, we look at the arithmetic of severance—what it truly covers, what it does not, and how much risk salaried households may have been carrying without fully pricing it.

We seem to be at a crucial moment when the job market is being redefined, forcing us to re-examine many of our assumptions about work. Recently, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran called for a shift in India's approach to employment and education, saying the era that favoured software jobs and MBA degrees is coming to an end and that the country must place greater value on trade skills such as welding, plumbing, electrical work and carpentry. Till recently, there was a playbook to landing a six-figure job but today that playbook is no guarantee.

An unpredictable job market is the current reality, and no sector is cushioned against the blow. Most of us religiously follow a SIP plan and keep an emergency fund. But in a job market where salary can stop abruptly without warning, wealth and liquidity are no longer the same thing. We may have created wealth, but do we have liquidity to bail us out in troubled times? How long will our emergency fund last before we are forced into a distress asset sale? Our third article explores the kind of financial resilience—across emergency funds, insurance, debt structure and liquidity—that we now need to navigate these troubled times.

And yet, even as this insecurity deepens, another story continues to exert its pull.