[reaperducer]

It's somewhat a generational thing.

"Laid off" didn't really come into common use until the late 80's and early 90's when companies started caring about the PR hit from firing lots of people all at once. Think steel companies and car companies and coal mining companies.

Before that, you got "fired" whether it was your fault, or not. If you were lucky, you company specified you were "fired without cause," but that wasn't always expected.

In the 70's, my mother lost her job when an entire hotel was closed down. She wasn't "laid off." She was "fired." Although she called it "shit-canned."

I recently came across another term for it that they used in the 1940's, before "fired," but I can't remember it right now.

[wwfredrogersdo]

Are you saying that when “laid off” began being used 30-40 years ago it implied you’d be rehired? Because that’s the claim being made above about the current meaning of the term.

Edit: Wikipedia agrees that this is a generational difference and the term laid off used to imply it was temporary. Today I learned…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff

[reaperducer]

That is correct.

"Laid off" meant you could collect unemployment for a while, and might be called back when conditions changed.

Like how coal miners would be "laid off" when the price of coal went down, but be called back when the price went back up.