This is Help Launton, the show that tackles all the big work questions you cannot ask anyone else.

I'm Jason Feiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and I'm New York Time Specialing

author and money expert, Nicole Lapid.

The helpline is open!

Throughout the course of the last few years, and especially recently, we have heard many,

many stories about people getting laid off.

In the face of economic uncertainty, countless companies have decided to furlough or lay off

their employees to offset financial losses.

Massive companies that you might think would be less affected by the overall economy,

companies that feel too big to fail, like Meta, Google, Salesforce, Spotify, Microsoft,

Disney, Goldman Sachs, have all laid off employees.

And sadly, I don't think we're out of the woods just yet.

So I wanted to put together an episode on how best to prepare.

And I realized this was such an important resource after talking to some listeners who were

totally blindsided by company-wide layoffs.

Here's one.

Hey, Nicole, my name is Abby, and I live in Providence.

Before the pandemic, I was working for a digital media company, and over the course of

the past year, about 100 employees were laid off, and I was one of them.

I know that we can't predict things like pandemics, but can we predict layoffs?

Are they somewhat predictable?

Should I have even seen it coming?

...