HOW TO SURVIVE A LAYOFF?

Surviving a layoff requires both resilience and a foolproof financial plan. Here's how to create one and navigate the turbulence in one's career

- Meghna Maiti

Moinak Saha, 26

Delhi-based sales manager with leading ed-tech firm

He was laid off just five months into a job he got through a campus placement from a B-School despite meeting his targets. He took up another job with a pay cut as he had to pay off his education loan EMIs.

Layoffs have been in the news ever since the year started. According to some estimates, the Indian tech industry alone has laid off around 200,000 people in 2023 so far.

Though the pace of layoffs seems to have slowed down, it's a situation that anyone can face anytime. In a lot of cases, this does not even directly relate to the employee's performance.

While the older generation may have savings to back them up, the younger generation can find it difficult to cope with a job loss.

Delhi-based sales manager Moinak Saha, 26, was laid off from a leading ed-tech firm in November 2022, when he was just five months into his job after a campus placement from a B-school. He lost his job even though he had achieved his sales targets. That hit Saha hard.

"I had an education loan of ₹12 lakh, and I was using 90 per cent of my salary to pay off the principal amount of the loan to lessen the burden on my father. He was paying the equated monthly instalments (EMIS) at 11 per cent. So, I had no savings and had to again ask my family for my daily expenses," he says.

Most young people take education loans for higher studies or professional courses. Also, their income is usually not very high at this stage, as they are at the first few rungs of their career ladder. All this, coupled with the fact that they may also be in the process of setting up their houses and life, leaves little scope for them to have savings or an adequate emergency corpus.

In this scenario, dealing with the financial aftermath of a layoff and surviving it can be tough.