Forever layoff: A rising trend turning workplaces into waiting rooms

Forever layoff captures a quiet shift in modern work: Layoffs that never end, only repeat. Through Dickens’s fact-driven Coketown and Kafka’s unfinished trial, this analysis traces how endless uncertainty reshapes mindspace, productivity, trust, and power at work. Jobs remain, but assurance disappears. Careers no longer progress or conclude. They linger, alert, provisional, and permanently under review.