Photo: TikTok
Wish you could learn how to figure out if you're about to get laid off. Turns out you can & it's been right under all of our noses.
By John Sundholm — Written on Mar 24, 2023
There is perhaps no greater blindside than losing your job. So wouldn't it be a huge relief to know how to predict layoffs at your job?
Well, it turns out you can — and it's been right underneath our noses the entire time. A former Wall Street professional is showing people on TikTok how to read the proverbial tea leaves when it comes to job losses — and maybe even have a job offer in hand before the time the pink slip even arrives.
A TikToker has revealed how to predict layoffs using a little-known government website.
A TikTok influencer named Vivian, known as @yourrichbff on the app, is a former finance professional who bills herself as an "ex-Wall Streeter helping YOU get rich."
Learning how to predict layoffs isn't exactly a get-rich-quick scheme, but it sure does have the potential to save you money — not to mention boatloads of stress — as Vivian lays out in her video.
Larger companies are required to provide notice to employees about coming layoffs.
Vivian begins her video with a skit between an employee being laid off and her boss giving her the bad news.
In a scene that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who's gotten a surprise layoff, the boss character says, "Hey. I've got some really bad news, but you're being laid off." But unlike most of us who've been in this situation, the employee is unmoved — she just shrugs and says "Okay."
When her boss asks why she's "not sad," the employee reveals she "knew layoffs were coming." She also reveals that she's been "job-hunting for weeks, and I actually just got another job offer last night." That sounds like a dream scenario, right? Turns out that's the reality. As Vivian reveals, you can often predict layoffs at your job by checking on a simple government website.
"I checked the WARN notices," Vivian's laid-off worker character says, referencing a piece of federal legislation so little-known that, according to Vivian's TikTok, even many bosses know nothing about it.
You can figure out how to predict layoffs by checking your state's notices about the US government's WARN Act of 1988.
Vivian's mention of "the WARN notices" in her TikTok refers to a 1988 US labor law called the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988. As Vivian explains in her video, the legislation "requires most employers with 100 or more employees to provide a 60 calendar day heads-up of planned closings and mass layoffs."
That's two entire months. Imagine the difference that could make in how your job loss experience shakes out, especially given how, as life and career coach María Tomás-Keegan told us in 2018, job loss and unemployment "can lead to depression and a host of other emotional issues, just like any major loss — death, divorce, or a serious illness — can do to you."
So how do you get your hands on the information you need to know how to predict layoffs? It's as simple as a Google search. As Vivian puts it in her video, "all you got to do is Google 'WARN Act' plus your state and you'll find a .gov website that will show you a full list of places laying off employees."
And just because you never knew about the WARN Act until now, don't think it's toothless — because in actuality this probably isn't even the first time you're heard of it. Remember last year, when Elon Musk took over Twitter and got sued for doing a mass layoff of employees via email?
Well, as attorney Priya Sopori explains in the video below, that wasn't technically the reason Musk got sued. It was actually — you guessed — failing to provide 60 days' notice in violation of the WARN Act that landed him in legal hot water.
Among the many penalties for violating the WARN Act includes 60 days of back pay to cover the time during which employees were supposed to be notified of mass layoffs — another good thing to know for the next time you face the proverbial ax, especially if your job doesn't offer a severance package.
So there you have it — if you've ever wished you knew how to predict layoffs, it's just a quick Google search away. And in our nerve-wracking economic times, that advance WARN-ing (see what I did there) can make all the difference.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.