Laid off from Morgan Stanley.

What Morgan Stanley layoffs have meant for employees

Morgan Stanley has now made the same move in two consecutive Marches, and it wrote both of them down. The filing for its first quarter of 2026 records a March workforce management action that reached about 2% of the global workforce, and the firm called it an effort to improve operational efficiency and manage performance "rather than a change in strategy or exit of businesses." A year earlier the wording ran almost identically, a March reduction in force, also about 2% of the workforce, this one tied to performance management and the alignment of the workforce to business needs. Whatever the press called each round, the company filed both in nearly the same sentence.

The reporting and the filing don't agree on size, which is worth knowing before you repeat a number in an interview. The Wall Street Journal broke the 2026 round and the Associated Press put it at roughly 2,500 people, about 3% of staff, on the word of someone who spoke anonymously because the firm made no public statement. The company's own filing says about 2%. Both figures sit on the record. The reported cuts ran across investment banking and trading, wealth management and investment management, reaching private bankers, support staff, and people handling mortgages for wealth clients, by Private Banker International's account, while the Associated Press said the firm's financial advisors would stay out of it.

Set the cuts beside the payroll and the arithmetic stops behaving. The firm reported approximately 80 thousand employees at the close of 2024 and approximately 83 thousand a year later, which puts roughly three thousand more people on the books at the end of the twelve months that held a 2% March cut. Voluntary attrition ran at 9% globally in both of those years, and net revenues climbed from $61.8 billion in 2024 to $70.6 billion in 2025. For the one year where both endpoints sit on record, the March cut and a growing payroll happened together. Worth remembering when someone asks you to explain the layoff in an interview.

What the record holds on severance is money. The 2026 charge was booked as $94 million in Institutional Securities, $61 million in Wealth Management and $23 million in Investment Management, and the chief financial officer told investors the quarter's 65% efficiency ratio included the $178 million of severance charges. Older rounds carry their own figures, $353 million mostly for a firmwide reduction in the second quarter of 2023 and $133 million for one in the fourth quarter of 2022. If a package was offered to you, its terms sit in your own paperwork, the offer and any release you were handed plus any employment agreement, severance plan or equity award terms they point to. If you're weighing whether to agree, those and the deadline for signing are worth knowing.

In New York the filings are the part you can actually look up. Our tracker holds six Morgan Stanley filings covering 273 jobs since the start of 2025, every one dated March 5, 2026, the largest of them listing 120 jobs, and twelve filings across all the years we hold. New York's notice period exists so its Rapid Response teams can reach people first, the state's WARN fact sheet says, with job placement help, resume work and instructions for filing an unemployment insurance claim. If your notice arrived late or never came, the filing record is where you can start checking.

A sourced history of Morgan Stanley layoffs

• March 2026, Morgan Stanley workforce management action

  The firm booked $178 million of severance and put the action at about 2% of its global workforce in its first-quarter 10-Q, while an unnamed source told the Associated Press it reached roughly 2,500 employees, about 3%.

• March 2025, Morgan Stanley reduction in force

  The firm was preparing to cut 2,000 of its 80,000 employees, Bloomberg reported beforehand, in an account Entrepreneur carried. Severance came to $144 million in the firm's fourth-quarter 2025 release, with $78 million in Institutional Securities, $50 million in Wealth Management and $16 million in Investment Management.

• February 2024, Morgan Stanley planned wealth management cuts

  The firm planned to cut several hundred wealth management jobs, fewer than 1% of the unit and mostly away from clients, including roles left redundant after the E*Trade integration, as Banking Dive relayed The Wall Street Journal's reporting.

• Second quarter 2023, Morgan Stanley firmwide reduction in workforce

  Most of 2023's $353 million of severance was tied to that quarter's firmwide reduction, and the year's reductions reached about 4% of the global workforce, by the firm's 2024 annual report; Banking Dive reported deeper cuts around June under former chief executive James Gorman.

• December 2022, Morgan Stanley firmwide reduction in workforce

  Roughly 1,600 employees were cut, Banking Dive reported, while the firm's 2024 annual report counts that quarter's reduction as about 1% of its workforce, with $133 million of severance.

What to do if you're laid off from Morgan Stanley

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Morgan Stanley's biggest hubs: New York, New Jersey. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Morgan Stanley's hub states run: New York, New Jersey, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.