Financial

Payroll Orphan

A slang term for a person who has been fired or laid off. The term derives from the fact that the person will not receive a paycheck anymore.

References in periodicals archive

A manager friend tells me she was "selected out" but that her agency offered her "re-employment engineering." Another version I read seems to come from Britain, where people are "excessed." An agency accounting department has taken to referring to those fired as "payroll orphans." However, the coldest one I've yet heard was the description in a report of mass firings as "internal efficiencies."

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