How to prepare for holiday season layoffs

Companies often cut jobs around the holidays, so look for warning signs, secure personal data, and build a financial plan to manage uncertainty

- Callum Borchers

Companies sometimes create unpleasant conditions to force resignations.

Naughty or nice, you could find a pink slip in your stocking this season.

Sorry to be a downer, but the reality is December and January are typically the months when companies cut the most jobs. It's less about being Scroogey than resetting expenses as the calendar flips. Still, losing a job around the holidays feels especially cold, and this has been a bad year for layoffs.

U.S. businesses have eliminated nearly 1.2 million positions through November, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which advises companies on staff reductions and helps departing employees find new work. Challenger's 2025 layoff tally is 54% higher than in the first 11 months of last year. It's a level previously seen during recessions.

So now is a good time to be clear-eyed about possible warning signs and consider what you would do if “get a new job” were thrust onto your list of New Year's resolutions. Here are some things to keep in mind.

If you were put on a performance-improvement plan or didn’t get the usual year-end bonus, you probably know to be on notice. Ditto if your company is struggling financially or it takes less manpower for your department to complete its tasks with the help of automation and artificial intelligence.

Some signals are obvious. What to do isn't always apparent.

Amanda Schmidt saw the writing on the wall a few months before her early-December layoff from a marketing job at a tech company. Her team had been refining an AI tool, set to launch in January, which felt suspiciously like training a replacement.