Is it normal to have severe anxiety before a possible layoff?

Yes. Research on uncertainty consistently shows that indefinite possible bad news is harder on people than confirmed bad news. Waiting for a layoff decision produces chronic hypervigilance, disturbed sleep, and constant scanning for signals. It is a normal response to a genuinely ambiguous situation, not a personal weakness.

What should I do while waiting to find out if I'm being laid off?

Run two quiet tracks. First, refresh your skills and portfolio so you have a live option outside the company. Second, calculate your financial runway: total reachable cash divided by true essential monthly spending. Also learn your company's severance patterns from people who went through the last round, and save copies of performance documentation while you still have system access.

Does a coworker being laid off mean I will be next?

Not necessarily. Layoff lists are built around cost lines, org structure, and salary levels, not a fair performance rubric. Managers are given a number and a deadline. Performance matters, but it competes with tenure cost and which team leadership wants to protect, so who gets cut often looks arbitrary from the inside.

How much savings should I have in case of a layoff?

A common benchmark is three to six months of essential expenses for a stable industry, and six to twelve months if your field has frequent layoffs or a long average job search. Remember that severance, unused PTO, unemployment benefits, and side income stack on top of savings, so the true floor is usually closer than it feels during anxious late-night estimates.

Layoff planning September 28, 2026

Waiting to Find Out If You're Being Laid Off Is Worse Than the Layoff

Spend any time in the layoff threads and you'll notice something odd. Some of the most exhausted people there haven't been laid off. They're still employed, still performing, still getting good reviews. What they're doing is waiting. Waiting for the restructuring memo, the org chart update, the manager's calendar invite that could be a one-on-one or could be that meeting.

One person described it in a way I haven't been able to shake: every time someone at work said "got a second?", their stomach dropped. For months. The layoff, if it comes, will last an afternoon. The waiting had already eaten a year.

Why the Not-Knowing Is the Expensive Part

Bad news, oddly, is deliverable. It's terrible, and then it has edges. You know what happened, you file the claim, you call the people who need calling. What the human nervous system cannot process well is indefinite possible bad news. Your brain treats every ambiguous signal as a threat and runs the full alarm, all day, at work, at dinner, at 5 a.m. when you wake up doing arithmetic you didn't ask to do.

There's a second layer to it that almost nobody talks about: you can't prepare openly. If you start updating your resume where coworkers can see, or asking questions about severance policy, the vigilance itself becomes visible. So you perform calm on top of dread, which is two full-time jobs, and your performance review for both is "you seem a bit cold lately."

If this is you right now, the first useful thing is to stop grading yourself against the wrong standard. You're not weak for finding this exhausting. Uncertainty is genuinely harder on people than certainty, and pretending otherwise is how companies get a quiet, compliant workforce right up until the day the axe falls.

Your Coworker Getting Cut Is a Data Point, Not a Verdict

The single most corrosive thing about waiting is that the layoffs rarely take the person you'd predict. The person hired the same day as you, doing similar work, gets cut. So your brain concludes: I must be next, and worse, I must deserve it.

Here's what's actually happening in those meetings. Layoff lists are built around cost lines, org structures, and who happens to sit in which reporting box on a slide. Managers are handed a number and a deadline, not a fair rubric. Performance exists in the process, but it competes with salary size, tenure cost, and which team the VP wants to protect. The person who got cut was often expensive or inconvenient or simply near the wrong box on the chart.

Stop grading yourself against the wrong standard.

The Two-Track Plan You Can Run in the Dark

You can't control the list. You can control two things, and both can be built quietly.

Track one is skills. Refresh the portfolio, do a few practice problems, get the LinkedIn profile honest. Not because interview prep is fun, but because having a live option changes your posture. People who know they could get hired walk differently in restructure season.

Track two is money, and it matters more. Before anything else, write down one number: what you actually spend each month on essentials. Rent, food, insurance, minimum payments. Not your current lifestyle, the floor of it. Then take your cash, whatever's reachable within a week, and divide by that number.

That result is your runway in months, and it does something the dread can't touch: it converts a vague fear into a countdown you can plan around. "They might lay me off" is a panic. "If they do, I have 7 months" is a position. Same facts, different animal.

People are consistently wrong about this number in one direction. They guess worse than reality. Severance, unused PTO, unemployment benefits, and the freelance or consulting income most people underestimate all stack on top of the savings. The floor is almost always closer than the 3 a.m. version of you believes.

What to Do With the Waiting Weeks

A short version, since you're probably reading this on your phone in a parking garage somewhere:

Learn your company's severance pattern now, while it's still gossip and not your business. Ask the people who were there for the last round.
Screenshot or save anything that documents your performance, while you still have access.
If the meeting does come: sign nothing that day. Every severance offer is negotiable more often than people think, and "can I take this home and review it" is a completely normal sentence.
Do the runway math tonight, not after. The number is what lets you negotiate from planning instead of panic.

One More Thing About What Comes After

It helps to know that a layoff is less final than it feels. Amazon is currently on a well-documented recruiting spree for workers it previously laid off, the so-called boomerang hires, and it's not unique. Companies rehire the people they cut once the budgets turn. From the outside, the layoff that felt like a disaster often turns out to have been a market repricing.

This is not a reason to stop worrying. Worry doesn't respond to logic. But it is a reason to notice that the worst-case path has more exits than the 5 a.m. version of your brain draws.

The Point of All This

You can't shorten the waiting. The memo lands when it lands. What you can do is walk into it already knowing your number, your options, and your floor. That's the difference between being ambushed and being early.

If you want the number without building a spreadsheet, the Risk Runway calculator does it in about a minute: drag your savings and essential spending, get your runway in months and a date. Free, no signup. The deep report version breaks the runway down line by line and shows which expense is eating it fastest, which tends to be the part people find genuinely useful, because a runway you can see is a runway you can extend.