Karlee Rea had a strong, unshakable intuition that she would soon be laid off from her job. Back in February, quiet rumors circulated among colleagues that staffing cuts were on the horizon at LTK, the creator-focused e-commerce platform where Rea had built her career for nearly five years.
The 26-year-old Dallas-based content creator made the spontaneous decision to vlog her entire workday that week. She stuck to her usual routine: waking up early, heading to the gym, then logging on for her shift. As it turned out, Rea’s gut instinct was completely correct. That same morning, she was let go in the company-wide round of cuts. LTK confirmed the layoffs impacted a “low, single-digit percentage of LTK’s overall head count,” cutting across teams from software engineering to creator-facing roles.
Rea chose to keep filming even after receiving the devastating news, and included the layoff in her published vlog. “This was my first real career job after college. I never really saw myself doing anything else,” Rea shared in the video. “I have no idea what tomorrow will look like, but I do know that I’ll be taking you guys along every step of the way.”
That vlog has since earned more than 18,000 views, along with dozens of comments from other recently laid-off workers who said they deeply related to Rea’s experience. Inspired by this outpouring of connection, Rea launched a daily series called Unemployment Diaries, which she posted every day for a month. In the candid clips, she opens up about all the messy highs and lows of job hunting: endless doomscrolling on LinkedIn, the rush of excitement when landing an interview, and the sharp letdown when a rejection email lands in her inbox.
“Today is three for three for [job] rejections,” Rea shared on the 20th day of her series. “Today just left me feeling really defeated.”
Rea is far from alone in sharing her unemployment journey publicly. As of now, there are more than 400,000 posts on TikTok tagged with the hashtag #unemployed, and roughly 800 of those are categorized under the trend hashtag #unemploymentdiaries.
