For as long as I have been working in this field (a long time), “we are growing” has been a magical phrase for hiring and employer branding. It signaled opportunity, career paths, and safety. Lately, however, that implied meaning has been eroded. Companies and economies are growing, but the jobs, promotions, and opportunities are not. This shift - which appears to be more than just a blip - has serious consequences for how we talk to and attract talent.
Your employees know the truth. Does your EVP? At Fathom we measure the "Credibility Gap" between your promise and their reality.
What is “jobless growth”?
The concept itself is nothing new, economists use this term for years when GDP goes up but employment barely moves. What's new now, though, isn't that it's happening, it's why and how often. Jobless growth has gone from an occasional macro-economic oddity to a commonplace feature of the talent marketplace - and that's what I mean when I call it a "shift".
If you're anything like me, you'll have noticed that chats with heads of HR and TA now go a little something like...
- The business is growing.
- Revenue, margins, productivity, all headed in the right direction.
- But headcount is flat, or even lower than it was a year or two ago.
On the face of it, the business sound healthy. However, inside the organisation people are not experiencing that "growth" as more opportunity. In fact, the experience on the ground can be quite the opposite. Especially if those growth stories come along with hiring freezes, restructures, and “do more with less” rhetoric.
And when things feel off, talent, inside and out, are always able to sense it.
There's no doubt about it, this is jobless growth. However, it's now happening at more of as company level. And it's becoming worryingly common.
What’s happening out there?
Over the past few years we have all watched big brand names announce sizeable layoffs before going on to report healthy business results. At first, these were eyebrow raising moves. Some of us even called foul! Now, though, it seems as if we’re all just getting used to it and accepting it. You know what I mean...
- Between 2022 and 2023, Amazon laid off 27,000 employees. The following year, its revenues rose from approximately $574 million to $637 million, and its profits doubled.
- In 2023, Disney laid off 7,000 people, then saw both revenues and profits jump the following year.
- CVS laid off 5,000 corporate workers in 2023, and its revenues increased from $357 million to $372 million the next year.
- 3M cut about 8,500 jobs in 2023, and the following year its revenues and profits rose.
- UBS Warburg announced layoffs of 35,000 people in 2023, then saw both revenues and profits skyrocket the following year.
Source The Hill.
In conversations with TA leaders at employers much like these, I find the stories go a little like...
- “We have never had more customers, but my headcount is capped.”
- “The company is growing, but our requisition volume is half what it was in 2021.”
- “We are doing big AI and automation projects instead of adding people.”
Companies are "growing" and the commercials are often looking great, yet headcount, and promotions are stagnant. And employees sure aren't feeling secure.
On the macro side, some fast-growing economies are showing the same disconnect as these large employers. Output is up, but unemployment stays stubborn, especially if you're young or recently graduated. Just take a look at the jobs data coming out of the USA.
So, the old mental shortcut that “growth = more jobs” is no longer reliable. Far from it. Top talent, and those responsible for attracting them, now must qualify the growth and ask... growth in what?
Helping HR, talent acquisition, employer branding, and company culture professionals find careers worth smiling about.
The mindset shift: from “grow the team” to “grow without hiring”
We all instinctively understand the correlation between growth and jobs. If you were scaling up:
- You opened new offices.
- You added new functions.
- You broadened management layers.
- You expanded the TA team just to keep up
If you wanted a safe-bet career, the advice has always been simple: join a growing company and/or aim for a growing industry.
However, that logic, as of recently, doesn’t necessarily apply anymore. Behind closed doors, more and more leadership teams are asking a different question:
“How far can we grow without adding headcount?”
The whole rhetoric and strategy around growth has evolved...
- Company leaders no longer celebrate the size of their organisations by headcount; it’s spoken about in terms of revenue per headcount.
- Growth strategies now treat automation and offshoring as the default growth lever, not a backup option.
- Senior leaders who feel burned by the hire-fast, fire-fast patterns of yesteryear are determined not to repeat it.
From the outside, you still hear “we are growing”. From the inside, the marching orders sound more like “no net new roles this year”.
And who could blame these large organisations and their leaders? Let’s face it, they’re businesses and this is... well, business. But it pays to understand it and adapt.
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What is driving jobless growth right now
It would be easy to blame everything on AI. In my view, AI is an accelerant rather than the main cause. In some cases it's also a scapegoat (check out what The Guardian said about US companies AI Washing their layoffs). There are at least four forces working together here...
1. Shareholder pressure for “efficient growth”
After the era of cheap money, investors changed the incentives.
Those providing the finances want their returns faster than ever and are very clear in their calls for...
“Disciplined growth.”
“Margin expansion.”
“Operating leverage.”
In plain English: grow the top line, sure, but grow profit faster than cost. Headcount is one of the biggest costs, so now it’s one of the most scrutinised.
This is why you see proud announcements about “revenue up, headcount down”. In environments like this, large hiring sprees look highly unpalatable to the managing class calling the shots.
2. Automation and AI as the first tool on the table
The second force is obvious but still underestimated.
A few years ago, many companies would hire first and automate later. Today, the order has flipped:
- Can we automate this with software or AI?
- Can we redesign the work so the existing team can absorb it?
- If both fail, do we really need to hire?
From what I have seen, AI is already being used less as a way to “help busy people” and more as a way to avoid opening new roles. A lot of this is driven by AI’s potential rather than what it is reliably delivering today, but that is a moot point if you are the person losing your job.
This is especially visible in customer support and service, back office and operations, content, coding, and most basic analysis work. The jobs might not disappear overnight. Instead, the planned headcount never appears in the first place, same outcome, this is just a slower and less noisy way of getting there.
Momentum isn’t always progress, especially when you always end up back where you started. Fathom helps you escape the loop. With insight, not intuition.
3. Platforms and digital business models
The third driver is structural. A lot of modern businesses now scale through:
- Software platforms.
- Cloud infrastructure.
- Data and network effects.
We live in a highly digital word and most new and rising companies have digital products. If you run a platform, adding ten thousand customers or a few million users is mostly an infrastructure and product challenge. Unlike the old days, it does not automatically mean a proportional increase in headcount (if any at all).
Inside large enterprises, similar things are happening. A relatively small team can build tools and services that allow many other teams to grow their output without hiring a lot of extra people (also accelerated with AI and AI agents).
The result: big growth in activity, small/no growth in staff numbers.
4. Offshoring, outsourcing, and non-traditional labour
Finally, there is the question of where the work sits.
Even when organisations need more human effort, it's becoming more common to...
- Move it to offshore hubs.
- Place it with outsourcing partners.
- Spread it across contractors, agencies, or gig work.
At over $550 billion today, the gig economy is on track to surge past $1.7 trillion within the next decade.
From the perspective of a careers site or LinkedIn headcount graph, the company looks flat. In reality, there is a larger, more fragmented labour ecosystem sitting behind it.
That is still a form of jobless growth for people who expected that a growing business would translate into more internal roles, promotions, and local hiring.
EBN
Why the old growth story breaks in EB and TA
This is where it bites for employer branding and talent work. For years, “we are growing” has been one of the most common reliable story buckets in the EB playbook. It implied three things:
- More roles to apply for, now and on the horizon.
- More chances to progress.
- More security, because growth supposedly meant safety.
In a jobless growth world, none of these can be relied on anymore.
“We are growing” is no longer enough
Candidates and employees are smarter than they get credit for, and many have already been burnt. Understandably, they’re becoming more sceptical and now ask more questions, such as...
- Are you growing revenue, or headcount, or both?
- Is this growth generating more meaningful work for people, or only more profit?
- What does this growth look like for my team, in my location?
If your EVP still leans on “hypergrowth” or “rocketship” language without explaining any of this it now risks sounding hollow or misleading. If this sounds like you, it's probably time to consider a refresh.
Growth does not guarantee opportunity
Inside companies, it's the psychological contract that's under pressure. In the past, a growing business usually entailed there were new teams to lead, new problems to solve, and new rungs being added to the ladder.
Now it's more common to hear stories of growth tied to headcount freezes, layers of middle management disappearing, or promotions drying up. It feels very different to the growth of yore.
For switched on or ambitious talent, this different experience of “growth” can be a much less attractive one. If leaders aren’t transparent and clear about the growth story internally, it’s not uncommon for resentment to eventually set in. Employers can go from winning formula to toxic culture before they know what happened.
Recruiting is no longer the poster child of growth
When more growth meant more people, TA could position itself as a direct growth engine. Today, in many organisations, the brief for TA sounds more like:
- “Keep our brand warm.”
- “Fill backfills and a few strategic roles.”
- “Be ready to ramp up when conditions change.”
I know for many in TA this has felt like a downgrade. But, with the right impetus and support it can also open space to redefine value around quality, scarce skills, and strategic workforce planning rather than sheer volume. It takes courage and a sympathetic employer, though.
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How I think EB and TA should respond
The answer is not to stop talking about growth. Growth still matters. The trick is to get much more precise.
Here are some practical shifts I'd encourage teams to make.
1. Be specific about what kind of growth you are selling
Whenever growth shows up in your messaging, qualify it. Or even label it. Force yourself to answer:
- Are we talking about revenue growth.
- Customer growth.
- Product and innovation growth.
- Or genuine headcount growth.
Then join the dots. What does that growth actually mean for someone in a given role.
For example:
“We have grown our customer base by 40 percent in two years, with the same size core team. That means you work on higher impact problems, not a ballooning bureaucracy.”
Or,
“We are increasing headcount in our data and automation teams by 30 percent, even as we keep overall numbers flat. If you work in that discipline, there are real opportunities here.”
That level of clarity builds more trust than a generic “we are growing fast”.
2. Reframe the EVP around skills, impact, and stability
If you cannot honestly promise waves of new roles, there are other things you can emphasise.
In a jobless growth environment, I see three themes still working well:
- Skills: “You will learn how to work with AI, data, and automation in a realistic setting, not just read about it.”
- Impact: “Because we are lean, the work you do actually moves the needle, and you can see the results.”
- Stability: “We care about building a sustainable business model, not just chasing headcount milestones.”
These are still growth stories, just not in the old “we are doubling every year” sense.
You might be surprised, it's not just company leaders who don't like bloat, employees don't want excessive layers of management either.
3. Treat internal mobility as a core part of the growth story
If total headcount is flat, internal movement becomes the main way people experience change.
That means:
- Making internal opportunities visible and easy to explore.
- Coaching managers to support moves rather than hoard talent.
- Investing in reskilling pathways for roles that are likely to be reshaped by automation or outsourcing.
From a branding perspective, this is gold, because it lets you talk credibly about careers in a world where the company is not constantly adding new seats.
4. Change how you talk about AI, automation, and efficiency
Many companies are clumsy in their public language here (or eerily silent). They either over-promise (“AI will not cost any jobs”) or lean into the cost cutting story in a way that spooks people.
In my experience, the most honest and effective approach is:
- Acknowledge that technology will change how work is done.
- Spell out what the organisation will do to support people through that change.
- Avoid using “growth” language as a distraction if there are real job risks on the table.
Candidates and employees can handle nuance. What they hate is spin.
A few predictions about where this is heading
If jobless growth continues on its current path, here is what I expect to see more of in the next few years.
Headcount-light growth becomes the default management goal.
Leadership teams will be trained to ask “can we solve this without hiring” as a standard reflex. TA will be brought in later and more selectively.
The “fast growing company” loses its automatic halo.
Some candidates will actively avoid hypergrowth stories because they associate them with instability and whiplash restructures.
Employer brands tilt toward durability over drama.
Messaging that stresses sustainable economics, predictable workforce planning, and thoughtful use of technology will resonate more than “rocketship” metaphors.
Internal labour markets matter more than external ones.
Organisations that build strong internal mobility, reskilling, and redeployment muscles will have an edge, even if they are not hiring thousands of new people every year.
Growth becomes something people interrogate, not assume.
When someone hears “we are growing”, their follow-up question will be “in what way, and what does that mean for people like me”.
Final thought
For me, the core of this is simple. We have lived through a long period where “growth” and “jobs” were tightly linked in people’s minds. That link is loosening. Output, profit, and valuation can all climb without the same lift in hiring and opportunity.
If you work in HR, TA, or employer branding, you sit right on that fault line. Your job is to update the story so it is honest about what growth now means inside your organisation, and to be clear about how people can still build meaningful, resilient careers in a leaner world.
Because if growth no longer automatically means jobs, we need a new way to talk about why working here is still worth it.
Takeaways
Growth no longer guarantees jobs
Companies and economies can grow while headcount, promotions, and openings stay flat. That breaks a long-standing assumption for talent.
“We are growing” is no longer enough
You now have to specify what is growing – revenue, users, product lines, or actual roles and career paths.
AI and efficiency are the new first levers.
When extra work arrives, leaders increasingly reach for automation, platforms, and offshoring before they reach for new hires.
The old hypergrowth story is losing its shine
Candidates are more sceptical of rocketship narratives. Stability, clarity, and honest workforce planning are starting to matter more.
EB and TA need a new growth story
The job now is to explain how people can still build skills, impact, and careers in organisations that are growing headcount-light, instead of just promising “more jobs coming soon.”
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jobless-recovery.asp
- https://www.weforum.org/videos/what-is-jobless-growth-and-how-can-we-fix-it/
- https://techblog.comsoc.org/2024/04/30/big-tech-post-strong-earnings-and-revenue-growth-but-cuts-jobs-along-with-telecom-vendors/
- https://apnews.com/article/74387fae2313ff7b0b1e638c00863443
- https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/9/8/projected-impact-of-generative-ai-on-future-productivity-growth
- https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/mckinsey%20digital/our%20insights/the%20economic%20potential%20of%20generative%20ai%20the%20next%20productivity%20frontier/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier.pdf
- https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-said-openai-plan-dramatically-slow-down-hiring-ai-2026-1
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