High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Layoff (in British and American English), also called redundancy in the UK, is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or (more commonly) a group of employees for business reasons, such as when certain positions are no longer necessary or when a business slow-down occurs. Originally the term layoff referred exclusively to a temporary interruption in work, as when factory work cyclically falls off. The term however nowadays usually means the permanent elimination of a position, requiring the addition of "temporary" to specify the original meaning.