Louis Uchitelle, a reporter for The New York Times, will write a book about the history of layoffs since 1995. Over the past twenty years the layoff has become a social norm. Employers engage in the practice as the first line of defense against hard times, and workers have come to accept it as rational practice, even after they are laid off. How did the layoff become so commonplace and acceptable when, as recently as the mid-1990s there was public outrage at mass layoffs? Uchitelle will examine the transition from outrage to acceptance, drawing on years of reporting and considerable additional research.