Loud Headlines, Low Layoff Count: Big Tech Exit Offers, Canva's Reset, Thin AI Gains and a UK Salary-Ad Rule

US employers announced 43,994 job cuts in October, the fewest for any October since 2023 and 71% fewer than a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas data reported by Bloomberg. In the same week Canva told 1,271 people their roles were affected, Squarespace cut about 300, Block began a second round and Disney was reported to be planning several thousand more.

Both are true, and they measure different things. The count tracks announced cuts, while the headlines describe how companies are reshaping their teams: voluntary exit offers at Microsoft, Google and Meta, relocations at Canva, smaller teams at Squarespace and Block. This issue sets the stories beside the data.

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The week in one line: US announced job cuts are low and new jobless claims are at a 57-year low, according to Reuters, yet the headlines are full of cuts, and the Bank of England says AI has added little to productivity so far. For employer brands, the pressure point is the gap between how a company describes a change and how its people experience it.

This Week’s Paper Cut

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How are companies delivering exits? Voluntary offers at Google and Meta, and packages at Canva, Block and Squarespace

Last week's Paper Cut covered Microsoft's voluntary exit offer to about 60,000 employees. This week the format spread. Google has expanded voluntary buyouts to selected employees in Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland, according to People Matters' account of a Reuters report, which says Google confirmed that some teams ran exit programmes in 2025 before it widened the scheme internationally in June. In Switzerland, employees who accepted received one month's salary for every year of service, capped at 12 months.

Meta is reported to be negotiating a collective voluntary departure scheme in France that could affect about 100 of its roughly 300 employees there, according to French publication La Lettre, as relayed by People Matters. The proposed terms are 2.15 months of salary per year of service and ten months of mobility leave paid at 80% of gross salary. People Matters notes these are proposals rather than a confirmed agreement, and that Meta has not said whether the scheme will extend beyond France.

Canva published the week's most detailed exit. Chief executive Melanie Perkins told staff that 1,271 people, or 22% of the company, are affected, as product, growth and platform merge into one product organisation, and Sydney becomes the primary home for more product teams. Everyone leaving receives at least six months of salary, with 12 months of healthcare where it is provided, 12 months of employee assistance cover and US$10,000 grants from a Canva Collective Fund for people who want to start something of their own. From January, most hybrid staff are expected in the office two to three days a week. EBN examined how that package and the new office expectation sit against Canva's EVP in Every EVP Has an Exit Clause: What Canva, Meta and Oracle Reveal About Layoffs.

Block's second round of cuts this year began on Wednesday with a different package from February's, according to Business Insider: at least seven weeks of base pay plus a week per year of service, another 30 days of pay for those who sign, three months of COBRA coverage and a $5,000 payment. February's cuts took Block from more than 10,000 employees to just under 6,000 and were framed around AI, while the new email refers to using better tools for routine tasks and does not mention AI, Business Insider reports. Squarespace is cutting about 19% of staff, around 300 people, mostly in product and engineering, with at least 16 weeks of base pay and benefits to May 2027, according to the CEO memo Business Insider published.

The pattern here is that the package has become part of the announcement. Canva published its terms, while Block's terms and the Squarespace memo were both published by Business Insider, so employees, candidates and former staff can set them side by side. What this suggests is that severance terms are now read as an employer brand statement, and a package that shrinks between rounds, as Block's health cover did from six months to three, will be noticed.

Employer Brand POV

Publish the terms of any exit programme in one place that current and former employees can read, and keep them consistent between rounds, because candidates can now compare Canva's six months with Squarespace's 16 weeks and Block's 90 days.

Are layoff headlines louder than the data? October's job cuts, jobless claims and quits

Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 43,994 announced US job cuts in October, down 71% from a year earlier, when the month had the most cuts in more than two decades, Bloomberg reported. Market and economic conditions was the top reason employers gave in October and has overtaken AI as the main reason for workforce reductions in 2026. Employers also said they intend to hire nearly 445,000 workers, up 57%, but the rise came entirely from holiday staffing, with Amazon planning 300,000 and UPS 100,000. Andy Challenger said seasonal employers are staggering their announcements and are neither cutting deeply nor committing to permanent headcount.

Other data point the same way. Reuters reported that new US claims for unemployment benefits fell to a 57-year low last week, although uncertainty is constraining hiring. ADP said private employers added 86,000 jobs in October, with professional and business services losing 27,000 and information services 2,000, and with people who changed jobs seeing pay rise 4.8% against 3% for those who stayed. Axios, reporting the September JOLTS data, put the quits rate at 2.1%, the highest since June 2025, and the layoffs rate at 1%, near historic lows, with openings in finance and insurance down half a percentage point.

Tech explains why the headlines look different. Challenger's September report, as cited by Fortune, showed announced US cuts of 573,195 through September, down 39% on 2025, while tech's 165,925 cuts were up 54% and made up 29% of the total. The official October jobs report was due on Friday 6 November, with economists expecting payrolls up 65,000 and unemployment steady at 4.2%, according to Bloomberg.

Engagement is where the quiet shows up. The Resolution Foundation, a UK thinktank, found that 55% of the 4,656 adults it surveyed in 2025 were willing to go the extra mile for their employer, down from 69% in 2015, and that 63% said they had an interesting job, down from 74%, the BBC reported. At ASML, the engagement index fell to 73.5% from 78% after the company cut about 1,700 roles in January, and chief executive Christophe Fouquet is adding a Workplace Experience Index to the long-term incentive plan for senior leaders, including himself, according to Fortune, citing a staff memo first reported by Business Insider.

The pattern here is a labour market that is quiet on layoffs and louder on quits. What this suggests is that fewer announced cuts do not mean settled employees: movers are paid more than stayers, and the UK and ASML engagement data point the same way. Challenger's figure measures announcements, so it says little about how many people eventually leave under voluntary offers. October's low count does fit the finding in last week's Paper Cut that announced cuts do not peak at year end, though one month is not a pattern.

Employer Brand POV

Track voluntary quits and regretted attrition monthly alongside layoff counts, and compare the pay of people who move with the pay of people who stay, because ADP found job changers' pay rising 4.8% against 3% for stayers.

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Is AI paying off yet? The Bank of England, Apple, Careerminds and Goldman Sachs

The Bank of England said in its monetary policy report on Thursday that AI has so far lifted growth through company spending rather than productivity gains made by workers, the Telegraph reported. Businesses responding to the Bank's Decision Maker Panel estimate AI has raised their productivity by about 0.5% over three years, which the Bank puts at a contribution of 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points a year to UK productivity growth since early 2024. Productivity growth rose in sectors heavily exposed to AI, such as information and communication, but not above pre-pandemic averages.

Bloomberg reported that Apple lowered the daily spending cap for some engineers using AI models to $200 from $300 last month and is planning further cuts, potentially to as little as $100, according to people with knowledge of the change. Bloomberg notes the cuts come even as Apple seeks to put AI at the centre of its operations. EBN covered the cost side of that choice in Now That The AI Bill Has Arrived, Employers Have a Choice to Make.

The people side of the payoff is uneven too. Careerminds, a workforce transition provider, surveyed 595 US HR professionals and 547 people managers with Censuswide in May and found that 92% of HR professionals believe employees could be reskilled for AI roles, yet 51% say their organisation hires externally for new AI roles against 42% who redeploy staff. It is vendor research, and it cites Josh Bersin Company work putting external hiring at three to five times the cost of filling a role internally.

Goldman Sachs economist Pierfrancesco Mei analysed more than 15,000 workers displaced between 2016 and 2025 and found that those displaced from AI-exposed jobs take about a month longer to find new work and are roughly 10 percentage points more likely to be unemployed a year later, according to Business Insider. Older displaced workers took about five weeks longer, against about three for younger ones, a pattern EBN looked at in Too Old to Hire. Too Young to Retire.. AI is also changing how staff talk to HR: the Australian HR Institute told the Australian Financial Review that 32% of its members reported more informal grievances in the September quarter, many written using AI.

The pattern here is a large AI expense with a small measured return, and the people carrying the uncertainty are the ones being cut, retrained or hired around. What this suggests is that employers who explain a restructure by pointing to AI will be tested against data like the Bank's, and Challenger's tallies already show market conditions overtaking AI as the leading stated reason. For the longer view on physical automation, see EBN's Robots Are Coming for the Labour Force. Time to Get Ready..

Employer Brand POV

Say what an AI rollout has changed in the work, with a figure where you have one, before attributing any restructure to it, because the Bank of England's panel data shows modest gains and employees will test the claim.

What is changing in hiring? The entry-level experience bar and a UK rule on salaries in job adverts

Entry-level roles are being advertised again, but with a higher bar. A Benedictine University survey of 400 hiring managers and early-career job seekers, reported by Inc, found that 63% of hiring managers expect a year or more of work experience for roles posted as entry level, while 46% expect their companies to accelerate entry-level hiring over the next two years. Some 72% named basic writing tasks such as emails and reports as the experience they want, and nearly a quarter said AI is already automating those same tasks. A separate 26% said AI taking over repetitive work made them more willing to hire someone with little or no experience.

A Straits Times opinion piece argues for apprenticeships over internships, on the grounds that the unofficial bargain in which juniors learn by doing routine work is eroding and that AI cannot remove the need for experienced professionals five or ten years from now. EBN tested McKinsey's proposed fix for that eroded apprenticeship in Entry-level work, AI and the answer key: where McKinsey's plan breaks down.

In the UK, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said employers will have to state what they are willing to pay in job adverts, with legislation expected to follow, the Independent reported. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak welcomed the move and said flexible working options should also be listed in every posting. The Independent cited a 2023 CIPD survey of 832 hiring decision-makers in which 41% of employers always included salary information and 27% never did. It also cited ONS data showing vacancies down by 21,000 to 691,000 in the three months to September, and the figure that 13% of 16 to 24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training between April and June.

EBN's October piece Dear Government, Recruitment Needs Some New Rules listed hidden salary bands among the habits making recruitment worse.

The pattern here is that entry-level candidates are being asked for more experience while the information they need to decide whether to apply stays thin. What this suggests is that clearer job adverts, covering pay, the experience actually required and how AI changes the role, are an employer brand lever as well as a compliance task.

Employer Brand POV

Rewrite entry-level adverts to state the pay range, the experience actually required and what the first year of learning looks like, because the Benedictine survey suggests the bar is rising while the label stays the same.

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Odds and Ends

Three smaller stories.

Binance said attackers behind its US$6.34bn hack on 29 October approached an engineer in September through a legitimate job-search platform and sent a fake interview exercise that contained malware, according to CNA, citing AFP. The FBI attributed the attack to North Korea-affiliated hackers, which Pyongyang denies, and Binance says it has replenished 98% of the assets, with about US$2.85bn frozen. EBN's One North Korean Hiring Cell, 1,000 Applications, Nine Jobs: What Changed Since 2025 covers the hiring side of the same playbook.

New York Fed research reported by TechRadar found that firms require an average of 3.74 office days a week while employees attend 2.59, that 49% of commuters do not have fully in-person meetings and that 45% say their firm follows "One Zoom, All Zoom". A separate Owl Labs survey, also reported by TechRadar, found that 59% of UK workers say monitoring software tracks them and 82% say employers should disclose it. Canva's new two to three days in the office from January will test that gap.

DoorDash told employees not to connect with Instacart staff on LinkedIn while their $17bn deal is pending, according to Business Insider, which says the instruction appeared in a Q&A filed with the SEC and that the deal is expected to close at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028.

The Cut List

Eight employers announced or detailed workforce reductions this week, from a relocation-led restructure at Canva to voluntary offers at Google and Meta. Figures are as reported, and where a number has not been confirmed the source is named.

Sorted by type, the list holds three kinds of exit: cuts delivered by memo (Squarespace, Block, Disney, Fiserv and BMW China), a restructure with published terms (Canva) and voluntary offers (Google, Meta and, last week, Microsoft). Challenger counts announced cuts, and none of this week's sources says how voluntary offers are counted, so October's 43,994 is best read as a measure of announcements rather than of everyone who is leaving.

Takeaways

• Challenger counted 43,994 announced US job cuts in October, the fewest for any October since 2023 and down 71% on a year earlier, so this week's loud headlines sit beside a quiet announcement count.
• Google, Meta and Microsoft are using voluntary exit offers, while Canva, Block and Squarespace have published or leaked terms that candidates and employees can compare.
• ADP found job changers' pay rising 4.8% against 3% for stayers and JOLTS put the quits rate at 2.1%, its highest since June 2025, so retention work matters even when layoffs are low.
• The Bank of England's panel data points to AI lifting business productivity by about 0.5% over three years, so claims about AI and headcount should be specific and measurable.
• Benedictine University found 63% of hiring managers expect a year or more of experience for entry-level roles, and the UK has announced plans to require pay in job adverts, so clear advert content is becoming a brand and compliance task at once.

Inside EBClub

EBClub, EBN's community for in-house employer brand, talent attraction, TA and HR practitioners, is in Paris on 24 November, followed by Rotterdam and London. Here is the calendar, and who to thank.

Not a member yet? EBClub is free for in-house practitioners: Join here.

Ready to book? Tickets for every date are in the events section, and thanks to everyone giving their time to share insights and experience with the employer branding community.

SOURCES

[EBCLUB DIRECTORY BLOCK: copy it from last week's Paper Cut, then delete this line.]