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Its very common. I wonder if Dec is actually the highest odds month to do a layoff.. but no idea where to pull those stats.

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https://layoffs.fyi/

In this most recent set of layoffs (which I'm defining as starting in 2022 since that's the dataset they have available) January is the worst month for layoffs.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, most companies at least wait until after the holidays to serve the bad news.

As an evil corp thought experiment - Dec is normally low productivity.. lots of vacations ,etc. If you are going to lay someone off in Jan, why not lay off in Dec and avoid paying for paid holidays?

Or paying out bonuses for the prior year since you don't let them finish the year that makes them entitled to the bonus.

I know my company is hinting at layoffs in Q1, well hinting, they've literally said they've budgeted money as an expense in Q4 to pay out severance packages in Q1. So they're at least waiting until after to give people their walking papers. That said, I'm not sure if the anxiety of not knowing if you're in a future layoff is maybe worse since now everyone is concerned, but then again, at least you can act accordingly, maybe layoff the credit cards.

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