NYU Clinical Professor of Human Capital Management Anna Tavis joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the recent rise in worker layoffs across various industries.

Tavis notes that during the pandemic there were "a lot of opportunities" as remote work dominated. However, she believes current job cuts seem driven more by efficiency than overhiring. Companies are now focused on trimming head counts for optimization rather then account for excessive pandemic staffing.

When asked whether AI investments are playing into these cost-cutting strategies, Tavis says: "This is a combination of both." However, she stresses the approach "differs from company to company."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, Cisco cutting thousands of jobs this weekend. And according to layoffs.fyi in the tech sector alone, more than 34,000 people have been laid off so far this year. That's just scraping the surface. Over 42,000 people and counting are being cut in other sectors like financial services and manufacturing according to Reuters.

For what this means for the future of workers, let's bring in Anna Travis, New York University clinical professor of human capital management. It's good to talk to you today. You know, it feels like we're increasingly hearing in these announcements, whether it is the tech announcements or those outside of tech. It's about efficiency, automation. I mean, is there a thread that we can point to beyond just overhiring that happened during the pandemic?

ANNA TAVIS: Yes, Akiko. Overhiring is going to be finding the reasons for this realignment looking back. Definitely in the pandemic, there was a lot of hiring, a lot of jobs opportunities, specifically in the tech sector. And these are the companies as we will remember that went remote first and were celebrating remote work.

Looking forward, however, I think there's a whole range of new reasons why companies are making these drastic decisions and cuts, and that has to do with, again, as you mentioned, efficiency, productivity, and the need to introduce efficiency tools and really quickly realign around AI and other types of technologies that are really replacing those very remote workers who have-- who have been kind of dominating the market before.

Because we can look internally as to what the companies are doing to execute on these layoffs, as well as internally that-- externally the dynamism of a market, whether there are other opportunities for those workers to move in and get new jobs and, you know, transition into new industries.