Amidst the recent layoffs in the United States, some chief executive officers (CEOs) of laid-off firms took pay cuts. Some have argued that the pay cuts would address employee unrest and achieve better organizational performance, and considering this, the phenomenon evokes the question of whether CEO pay cuts help enhance layoffs’ performance consequences. However, the existing academic literature lacks understanding regarding the effectiveness of CEO pay cuts in improving organizational performance in relation to layoffs. Focusing on employees’ judgment of layoff unfairness, I propose that CEO pay cuts alter the relationship between layoffs and organizational performance to be relatively more positive in such a way that the relationship has a negative directional pattern when the pay cuts are not made and a positive directional pattern when they are made. On top of that, I examine several factors that may moderate the proposed contingency effect of CEO pay cuts on the relationship between layoffs and organizational performance. A sample of publicly traded companies in the United States observed from 2001 to 2020 was used to empirically investigate the contingency effect of CEO pay cuts and their boundary conditions.