Steve Jaffe was laid off for the first time in 2001. But that wasn’t the last time for Mr. Jaffe, now 52 and a self-employed marketing strategist in Altadena, Calif. He was laid off three more times over the course of his career, he said, and wrote a book about his experiences that he self-published in February.
In addition to writing about jobs he has lost, Mr. Jaffe has been reading the layoff stories of others in Laid Off, a new Substack newsletter. “A support group like this for laid-off people has always been needed,” he said.
Melanie Ehrenkranz, 35, started Laid Off last August, about a year after she lost her job at a financial technology company that has since closed. After being laid off, she said, “I didn’t really feel like I had access to a community or to stories of layoffs outside of a group chat with two of my former colleagues.” By the time she introduced the newsletter, Ms. Ehrenkranz, who lives in Los Angeles, had started working for Business Class, an online entrepreneurship course created by the “#Girlboss” author Sophia Amoruso, where Ms. Ehrenkranz is still employed.
Within two months of debuting, Laid Off had about 5,000 subscribers. It now has about 9,000, with more than 150 paying $5 a month or $50 a year for full subscriptions that include additional resources like access to private group chats. Many subscribers work in layoff-prone industries like media, marketing and advertising, Ms. Ehrenkranz said, adding that she had recently noticed an uptick in subscribers with careers in government and technology.
Laid Off’s audience is a fraction of the size of more established Substack business publications like Feed Me. Its growth in readership comes at a time when posting about work online has become commonplace, whether it be “LinkedIn-fluencers” sharing hot takes on corporate trends or people making TikTok videos about office outfits. And at a time when there have been growing concerns about a recession and a rise in unemployment.
Some of those featured in the newsletter reached out to Ms. Ehrenkranz after losing jobs; others were chosen after completing a survey that she had posted on LinkedIn, which “received hundreds of responses right away,” she said. More women have been featured than men, Ms. Ehrenkranz added, because more women have approached her about participating.
Among the layoff stories the newsletter has told are those of a former Wall Street Journal editor, a former recruiter for Meta, a former content manager at Tesla and a former financial analyst at Disney who was with the company for nearly a decade.
Laid Off’s Q&A interviews touch on topics people sometimes avoid when talking about unemployment. Ms. Ehrenkranz’s go-to questions for subjects include “What were the reasons given for your layoff?” and “What was the first thing you did after getting laid off?” She said the newsletter’s tone was meant to be edgy and fun; a tagline on its website reads: “The coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off.”
“It’s definitely that vibe,” Ms. Ehrenkranz said. “The whole point of Laid Off is to show that it’s not a personal failure.”
Anu Lingala, 33, spoke to Ms. Ehrenkranz about losing her job at Nordstrom in a feature published in March. “Her interviews are so humanizing,” said Ms. Lingala, who lives in Brooklyn and now works in marketing at a jewelry company. “They unpack the shame around being laid off.”
The newsletter has a confessional-like quality that Lindsey Stanberry, a former editor of the Money Diaries column on the website Refinery29, appreciates. “There’s a voyeuristic element to it,” said Ms. Stanberry, 44, who now writes The Purse, a Substack newsletter about women and money. “It’s like, it could happen to me, or it has happened to me, and, like, I want to feel this camaraderie.”
Maya Joseph-Goteiner, 41, was among Laid Off’s first subjects: Her interview about losing her user-experience job at Google ran in the newsletter last August. In it, Ms. Joseph-Goteiner recalled going bowling with her family the day she was laid off and how the experience pushed her in new professional directions. Participating was an opportunity to offer a “counter narrative” to the desperation and shame that can bubble up when talking about losing a job, she said.
“My story felt like one of resilience, and I want there to be more stories like that,” said Ms. Joseph-Goteiner, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., and now runs her own research and design agency called Velocity Ave.
Ochuko Akpovbovbo, the writer of As Seen On, a Substack newsletter about business trends that is geared toward her fellow Gen Z-ers, said some in that cohort had shown less interest in careers in media and technology than members of older generations. Laid Off’s interviews with people who have lost jobs in those industries have helped contribute to “the end of Big Tech and journalism worship,” added Ms. Akpovbovbo, 26, whose newsletter was introduced last May and has about 22,000 subscribers.
For Joya Patel, Laid Off is a platform to remind people of the importance of certain careers. She pitched herself to Ms. Ehrenkranz after losing her job as the director of communications and external affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services in February. Ms. Patel, 34, who also subscribed to the newsletter around that time, said she had been motivated to share her story after reading another Laid Off interview with a former communications specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“I really wanted people to understand, OK, what does working at H.H.S. mean?” said Ms. Patel, referring to the federal health agency. “The American people don’t know what each agency does for them and what we sit in there to do.”
Ms. Patel, who is now consulting and whose Laid Off feature was published in April, likes how the newsletter lets readers “hear from the people,” she added. “I’m tired of companies being able to direct us and lead stories. As humans, we have that power, and I like to hear from people like, ‘Hey, I walked in, it was awkward. Things were awkward that day. This is why they told me they’re doing it.’ Because no company is ever going to say that.”
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