The Great Flattening in 2026: Life After the Middle Manager Layer
Episode 404: The Squeezed Middle
🔗 Read the full article here: https://smartkeys.org/great-flattening-middle-managers/
In this episode of the SmartKeys podcast, we examine a seismic structural reorganization taking place across modern business: the Great Flattening. Over the last few years, corporate leadership has aggressively thinned out the middle management layer. Gusto payroll data shows that managers dropped from 25% of the US workforce in 2019 to roughly 15% by late 2024, while manager hiring tumbled 40% below 2022 levels.
Based on the research guide by Felix Römer, we explore what…
The skinny
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