Forget layoffs: This quiet workplace tactic is shucking headcounts without anyone noticing

A new survey reveals how smaller companies are using a stealthy strategy to pass vacated workloads onto remaining staff—and AI bots.

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Employees across the workforce often collectively hold their breath in dread whenever another big company announces layoffs attributed to the work automating capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. But new data suggests there’s another, stealthier threat to employment these days: the so-called “ghost downsizing” by smaller businesses that no longer fill vacated jobs, and spread their orphaned tasks to remaining staff and recently introduced apps.

To be sure, managers asking........

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