What our survey of laid-off pubmedia workers reveals about cuts and their fallout

The end of federal funding has sent shockwaves throughout public media. At Current, we’ve been busy covering one of the most immediate and visible impacts: the tide of layoffs among the system’s stations and networks.

Since Congress passed the rescission July 18, we’ve reported on cuts affecting more than 370 workers — 168 in September alone. In addition, the roughly 100 employees who worked for CPB as of August lost their jobs when the corporation shut down.

While the tide of statements and press releases puts a number on the loss, it falls short of showing the full impact on the affected individuals and the system they’ve left. To try to fill that gap, we fielded a survey from Oct. 21 to Nov. 13 asking people who had been laid off to share details about their experiences.

We received 46 complete responses, representing only a slice of those affected, but the results are illuminating. (The respondents also included 10 people who were laid off before the rescission.) Four respondents spoke with us in depth about their layoffs as well.

Demographically, our sample aligned closely with the racial makeup of station employees as a whole, according to 2023 CPB data (the most recent year available before the corporation stopped tracking such data). 74% of our respondents were white, 8.7% Black or African American, 4.3% Hispanic/Latino, 4.3% Asian and 4.3% biracial/multiracial. But while women made up 51% of station employees in 2023, they accounted for 58% of our respondents.

Among the organizations with post-rescission layoffs that have been covered by Current, 52% were independent nonprofits. A slightly higher percentage of our respondents, 59%, worked for independent nonprofits.

Respondents to our survey held a variety of roles at their organizations.

They also represented a range of experience levels in public media, with a high concentration among people who had worked in the system for six to 10 years. That adds up to a lot of institutional memory going out the doors of these organizations.

We asked our respondents to share details about how they were laid off. The largest segment received no notice at all, while about 27% of those who answered the question had 15–30 days.

About a third of respondents said they received no extension of health care benefits, and about a quarter did not get severance pay — though about the same percentage reported getting more than 13 weeks of severance.

The majority of our respondents — 68% — said losing their job had at least a somewhat high impact on their financial well-being. Slightly fewer respondents also reported a somewhat high or high impact on their mental health.

Getting laid off appears to have soured at least half of our respondents on working in public media. Fifty-three percent said they were very or somewhat unlikely to work in the system again. The  largest share fell in the middle.

That frustration was evident in our conversations with respondents and in the verbatim comments gathered by our survey. Here’s a sampling of what respondents said when asked to share anything else about losing their job that they wanted us to know:

I was a one-person (overwhelmed) department responsible for on-air promos, newsletters, web, social media and part-time traffic — hard to believe the station doesn’t need these functions. After nearly 9 years, all with exemplary performance reviews, I got a very cold 2-minute dismissal — “The funding’s not there, your position has been eliminated.” No thank you, no compassion from upper management.

Working in public media was an overall demoralizing experience. 

To some extent I knew I would be cut because I was new, but considering my station has continuously vocalized their desire to focus on digital despite cutting the entire digital team [it] has left a really bad taste in my mouth. My warning was a 4pm mandatory interview put on my calendar the Friday before the meeting on a Monday morning. I had to work an event that weekend and keep it together. But that was more warning than what others got. I did get 30 days of paid admin leave effective immediately. Overall it was a really traumatizing experience and felt I was treated worse than when I was laid off from corporate America.  

I was exceptionally well treated by my employers and my colleagues across public media during this entire process. Our community is the thing I miss the most. 

I have no hard feelings toward my former station (mine was a logical position to eliminate under the circumstances) but it has been a financial and professional disaster for me personally at age 60

I felt like the organization was very hasty and disorganized in both their decision making and their process. They failed to clearly communicate the before and after messaging and were unable to give supporting details or provide reasoning behind reductions. The layoff process was handled poorly and much of it was related to prior financial mismanagement that the station was not ready to publicly or even within the organization discuss with transparency. 

The effective day of the layoff is the same day as my wedding, so the news was extremely demoralizing. 

it sucks!

Current will continue to report on the fallout from the loss of public media’s federal support. If you’ve lost your job or are feeling other effects and want to share your experience, reach us at news@current.org.