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On Wednesday, Business Insider reported that Amazon is trying to recruit back workers it previously laid off. They're not the only company dialing up former employees. One CEO of a small tech firm said she laid off staff, hoping AI would suffice — only to regret it. Another company more than doubled its boomerang hires in the last two years.

And in a related staffing reversal, Meta asked some of its recently reassigned employees to become managers once again.

The type of rehiring happening at Amazon and elsewhere is broadly on the rise. Revelio Labs, which analyzes employment data, found that by the end of 2025, 3.4% of new hires in the US were former employees, up from 3.1% two years earlier.

It comes as companies increasingly point to AI when announcing layoffs. Through July, employers attributed nearly one in four announced job cuts to AI, making it the leading reason cited for layoffs for the fifth consecutive month, according to career transition firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Amazon spokesperson Haley Silva said the company is always interested in connecting with former Amazonians for open roles. "Rehiring former employees is a normal, long-standing part of how we recruit," she said.

Maria Colacurcio, CEO of pay-intelligence platform Syndio, came to regret an AI-driven restructuring. Weeks after laying off five employees, including labor economists and other domain experts, she realized the company had gotten ahead of itself. She has since rehired one of them for a newly created position.

"We moved really fast," she told Business Insider. "The technology wasn't quite there yet."

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Colacurcio said she also should've given at least some of the workers she let go a chance to adapt to new roles she created as part of her reorg strategy. She'd expected other employees to move into those positions, but few were willing to do so.

"One of the things we get wrong is when we assume too quickly that people who are in a certain role can't evolve," said Colacurcio. "When you give people the right tools and training around AI, they can evolve."