4 Best Practices to Navigate Layoff Anxiety & Uncertainty
Episode 501 | Author: Emilie Aries
How do you manage the stress of looming layoffs?
Last month, layoffs across the U.S. rose an astonishing 205% compared to March of last year. That’s due in large part to billionaire Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, which cut more than 275,000 government jobs. This marks the third-highest layoff month ever recorded (inching up on April and May 2020).
In the midst of all these layoffs, the latest US jobs report is better than expected—it showed 228,000 job gains, 209,000 of which came from the private sector. Economists are divided on whether or not impending tariffs and other cost-of-living increases will spur hiring freezes in the near future. But whatever industry you work in—and whatever your presumed job security in the past—if you find yourself worrying whether you’re next on the list to receive a pink slip, you are definitely not alone.
That spectre of uncertainty takes a huge psychological and emotional toll. That’s why, today, I’m returning to a 2022 episode to share some practical strategies for managing layoff anxiety and stress to help you feel as prepared as possible, should you need a new plan.
Be Proactive
How can we manage and mitigate the impact of that stress? Be proactive.
Stress is your body telling you that you need to take action. In fact, stress can be very good in that way. When you hear a loud noise or see something that surprises you, your body pumps stress hormones through your entire system because it's trying to spur you to protect yourself.
I’ve found that rather than keeping your head in the sand, it’s best to imagine what you would do if you did get laid off. I know that's a grim thought experiment, but I distinctly remember going through a similar period of uncertainty myself.
After months of shopping around my business plan for starting Bossed Up, I felt stuck, not sure of what to do next. A mentor of mine told me, “Emilie, it’s time to take an actual risk and make your move.” I was clinging to the safety of my day job and afraid to make the leap. So, she asked me, “Emilie, what would you do if you failed?”
After some thought, I replied, “Well, here's how I would rise again. Here's how I would brush myself off and try again. Here's what complete and utter failure would look like.”
Rather than being depressing, you might find this thought experiment surprisingly freeing because fear is paralyzing in the abstract, but once it's concrete, you can actually get busy doing something about it.
So, I want you to make a list: What are the first few things you would actually do if you did get laid off? Your list might include:
Refresh my resume and cover letter to stand out in this new market
Revisit my brag book
Grow or reconnect with my network
Ask for informational interviews
Update my LinkedIn profile
Research the best job search resources out there
Consider this list your career's first aid kit, and then tuck it away for a rainy day.
Manage your mental health
The second thing to think about is managing your mental health.
It’s one thing to feel a little anxious, which is understandable when you fear a layoff, but a chronic anxiety disorder is a whole other thing.
I talk about this when I speak on the differences between burnout, anxiety, and depression, but if you feel like your mental health is really impacting your basic functioning on a daily or even hourly basis, that’s a red flag telling you to seek out professional support.
Don't underestimate the importance of getting your mental game on lock. I feel like everything else becomes possible when our mental health is in a good place, so before you dive straight into polishing up your resume, check in with your internal systems. Prioritize paying attention to your mental health.
Stay connected
Human connection is not an optional perk; it's a basic human need. And yet, even the most extroverted among us—myself included—withdraw when we’re feeling vulnerable.
I want to acknowledge that it makes sense and is valid, but we cannot allow ourselves to become hermits when we're feeling at risk personally or professionally. It’s important to keep isolation at bay, to connect and reconnect with anyone and everyone around us, to feel less alone.
That means talking to your colleagues about how they're feeling and to the stranger at the dog park about their fur baby. It means giving yourself permission to say, “Wow, I'm feeling really anxious and really stressed right now. I need to—now more than ever—pick up the phone and call my bestie or call my loved ones,” because staying alone in your room watching Netflix is not going to help.
Even though it feels like there's this huge emotional hurdle to overcome, this is the time when we need some eyeball-to-eyeball connection to feel grounded, safe, and whole.
You have more power than you know
Finally, I want to leave you with this important reminder: You have power and choice at this moment. You have power and control over how you react.
Remind yourself that you've been here before. This is not the first challenge you've navigated. This is not the first surprise in your life. This is not the first unforeseeable change and turn of events that has knocked you off course. I’m sure that if you look back through your work history or your life history, there are moments in which you have pivoted and been resilient.
A lot of how we react and respond in moments of uncertainty goes directly back to our identity—who we feel we are and what we feel we are capable of.
One of my favorite researchers, Hermminia Ibarra, wrote a great book called Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. In a section called In the Middle, she describes how tricky these moments of transition can feel. She writes:
“It's always ugly in the middle. At the root of transition is transit, a voyage from one place to another. As in any voyage, there's a departure, a disorienting time of travel…and finally, a destination. To be in transit is to be in the process of leaving one thing without having fully left it. And at the same time entering something else without being fully part of it. It is a gestation period of provisional, tentative identity when many different selves are possible and none are obvious.”
If you’re anxious about layoffs, know that you’re not alone. These moments of transition can prompt us to reflect deeply on who we are, why we’re on this planet, and what we imagine is possible for ourselves.
I want to come back to a truism we've always turned to here at Bossed Up: Have confidence in your ability to figure it out.
When you're navigating layoff anxiety, you might not be sure of where you’re headed next, but you don't need to know that to have confidence in your ability to figure it out. In these moments of uncertainty, I want you to bet on yourself.
How has the economy affected hiring at your company, and how is that affecting you, your family, and your career decisions? Share your own story of facing and overcoming job-related anxiety in our Courage Community on Facebook, or join us in our group on LinkedIn.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
Episode 402, How to Financially Prepare for Layoffs
Episode 457, How to Explain Your Layoff in a Job Interview
Episode 500, How to Stand Out in a Competitive Job Market
Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career by Herminia Ibarra
Reuters, US announced job cuts surge in March on Doge hit, recruitment firm Challenger says
CNBC, U.S. payrolls rose by 228,000 in March, but unemployment rate increases to 4.2%
HIRED: our Job Search Accelerator
Looking for more support in navigating a career change?:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 501. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I want to talk about navigating layoff anxiety.
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This is an episode that originally aired a few years ago and feels particularly relevant today given what's happening in the job market and the broader economic scene. So first, I want to acknowledge that today, as of this recording, layoffs across the US last month surged 205%. That's related to March 2025 compared to March 2024. So layoffs were up last month 205% year over year, with a lot of those job cuts being contributed to what's happening with DOGE, or the so called Department of Government Efficiency spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, who cut 275,240 jobs from the US government last month. According to an outplacement firm called Challenger Gray and Christmas.
Those layoffs actually represent the third highest monthly total ever recorded. The two previous highest monthly totals were from the early pandemic months in April 2020 and May 2020. So it's certainly a nerve wracking time for the average American worker, particularly for those in the public sector. In fact, I have an episode brewing for folks who are trying to pivot from the public sector. So stay tuned and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that upcoming episode.
What's interesting and what I was really waiting for was the data that came out just this morning. I'm recording this on Friday, April 4th. Just this morning we saw the US jobs report that came out last month. What's really interesting is that in light of all of those massive layoffs, the jobs report was better than expected with 228 total job gains. What's interesting is that of 228, did I say 228? I meant 228,000 job gains. Not just 228, but of those 228,000 jobs that we grew by last month, 209,000 of them were in the private sector. Not surprising, right? The public sector is not booming right now. It's an interesting, better than expected jobs report that's best summed up by Omar Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, who captured the mood of this report, according to the New York Times reporting, by saying, quote, someone forgot there was a recession coming and explaining all the hiring that we saw in the private sector last month.
So it's a mixed bag. I'm no Economist. But from what I've read, a lot of economists agree that with the new tariffs that Donald Trump has just implemented on pretty much everything, we are to anticipate higher costs, higher cost of living, higher inflation as an issue, working class people feeling the squeeze financially. And yet some economists are connecting those tariffs to a potential recession as a result, potential, you know, decrease in hiring as a result, I can imagine a lot of businesses will be experiencing higher costs, so might be hiring less. And some employers or some economists rather say, you know, higher costs due to tariffs may not put us into a recession, may not result in increased layoffs. It's too soon to tell.
But if you are worried about layoffs, you're not alone. And that's really what today's episode is about. Because honestly, a lot of the time it's the not knowing that is so anxiety inducing. So my advice for you today centers on what should you do to navigate layoff anxiety so that you can feel as prepared as possible and have a good plan in place should you need it? So let's jump right into the episode because sometimes, honestly, the worst part about layoffs is the limbo that you find yourself in between fearing that layoffs are coming and actually experiencing them for yourself.
And if you're on the receiving end of a pink slip, that is no easy road. But at least it's clear, right? So if you've been let go, we actually have an existing episode for you already, episode 68 of the Bossed Up podcast that I highly recommend checking out, featuring HR professional Dana Dowdell. But today we're talking through the worst part of living through that limbo, that liminal period between, you know, staying at your job and finding out that by no fault of your own, or really not by much choice of your own, that you're going to be downsized and laid off.
It was interesting we were chatting here as a team right before this recording, and Irene on our team shared that right before she got laid off from her prior role in higher education, leading into 2020 and all the uncertainty that that caused. She was living under that limbo state and that in between feeling for eight months at her last job. So there was an eight month time period between her organization announcing that layoffs were coming and finally making the call and laying off her and dozens, if not tens of or hundreds of her colleagues all at once.
And that amount of time, can you imagine, like, all the different moods or phases emotionally you would go through after eight months of that level of uncertainty? Turns out a lot of us can, because a lot of us have been living in limbo ever since 2020. Global uncertainty is no stranger, and it's a big stressor on so many of our minds. A recent survey from the APA earlier this year found that 81% of Americans cite global uncertainty as a major source of stress. So today we're going to talk through, like so many things that we do here at Bossed Up, some practical strategies for managing with that anxiety and stress. Not necessarily how to deal with getting laid off, but getting concerned that you might get laid off. What can we do to manage and mitigate the impact of that stress?
The first Boss Tip here is to be proactive. Okay? Stress is your body trying to tell you that you need to take action. In fact, stress can be very good in that way. Like when you hear a loud noise or you see something that surprises you, your body starts pumping stress hormones through your entire system because it's trying to spur you into action to protect yourself. So really, stress is simply your body's system trying to tell you you've got to take action. But if you're sitting in limbo and you're just generally anxious or generally stressed in this kind of amorphous, unclear way because of a situation that may come down the pipe and may impact you, then the challenge and sort of the birthplace of all of that undealt with stress in your body is the distance between feeling the fear and taking some sort of action around it.
So my best guidance on this from personal experience and from working with tons of others in this realm, is to genuinely imagine what you would do if you did get laid off. I know that's a grim thought experiment for sure, but I distinctly remember going through this myself when a mentor of mine, after months of shopping around my business plan for Bossed Up almost a decade ago now, finally said to me, alright, well, now you have to go do it. Because I was like, well, I've crossed all the T's, I've dotted all the I's, here's my plan. What should I do now? And she was like, you got to go take some actual risk. And I was so paralyzed in that moment, I felt just stuck and halted and stopped in my tracks. And she said, emily, what would you do if you did fail? If you just fell flat on your face and you were broke a few months from now? And I write in my book about how that exact thing did in fact happen. She said, what would you do? And I had to really answer that question for her and say, well, here's how I would stand again. Here's how I would brush myself off and try again. Here's what complete and utter failure would look like.
And while it can feel like a depressing thought experiment, it's actually a very freeing one. Because fear is paralyzing in the abstract, but once it's concrete, you can actually get busy doing something about it. So I want you to make a list. What are the first few things you would do if you did get laid off? Maybe your list would include refreshing your resume or revisiting your brag book, or tapping into your network and asking for help, conducting informational interviews, polishing up your LinkedIn profile, really accessing all the job search tools you can get access to.
Consider that list your career's first aid kit and then put it away for a rainy day. Just like all of our first aid kits are collecting dust, hopefully right now, tucked in a shelf or under a couch or in a cabinet somewhere. Make the list, check it twice, and then put it to bed. Because you've gotta know that you can break that glass in case of emergency and that you don't need to right now. That will help you sleep better at night because you're enabling yourself to be proactive, to be practical, and then to kind of package that up. My therapist likes to talk about putting things in containers. Put this in a container in your brain and give yourself permission to put it on a back shelf.
The second thing to think about speaking of, my therapist is managing your mental health. Look, it is one thing to just feel generally a little anxious, which is totally understandable, you know, in terms of fearing the risk of layoffs and downsizing impacting you. It's another thing from a clinical definition standpoint to have a chronic anxiety disorder or to be experiencing depression, for instance. I talk about this when I speak on the differences between burnout anxiety and depression. But truly if you feel like your anxiety and your doom spiral as a result of that anxiety is really impacting your day to day ability to just function. If you feel like it's really impacting your basic functioning on that level on a daily basis or even an hourly basis, that is a red flag that you have got to seek out support.
I'm not gonna be trite about this and tell you here's, you know, the breathing exercise that can help, or a yoga, or a mantra solution to this, although all of those are great forms of self care. Now if you're really experiencing anxiety disorders and the symptoms that can come with that. That's time to bring this to a professional. That is time to call in the big guns. Get yourself a qualified therapist. If you don't like your therapist, keep searching for one you do like. Don't underestimate the importance of getting your mental game on lock. I feel like everything else becomes possible when our mental health is in a good place.
Related to that, but bigger. And a really important takeaway, regardless of how mentally healthy you're feeling at the moment, is to stay connected. Human connection is not an optional perk. It's a basic human need. And yet, even the most extroverted among us, myself included, we withdraw when we're feeling vulnerable. There's a reason we call it feeling cornered, right? When you feel like your back is up against a wall and you're at risk of something bad happening to you, that's a very disempowering state to be in. And so what do we do? We bury our heads in the sand. We say, no, no, no, la la, la, this is not happening. I'm going to not even acknowledge this. I'm going to ignore this. That's not a great way of dealing with anything, but that's a way that we do. It's like human nature to avoid.
Or we try to hide under the covers and we say, this is really bad. So I'm going to just stay on my phone until 4:00 in the morning in bed, in a dark room, and not talk to anybody because we're not feeling particularly interested in connection when we're feeling really vulnerable and really at risk. And I want to acknowledge that that totally makes sense and that is valid. But we cannot allow ourselves to become hermits when we're feeling at risk, both personally and professionally. It is so important to keep isolation at bay and to reconnect or connect with anyone and everyone around us who we can talk to to feel less alone.
That means talking to your colleagues about how they're feeling. That means talking to the stranger at the dog park about how their day is going. That means giving yourself permission to acknowledge, wow, I'm feeling really anxious and really disempowered right now and really vulnerable and fearful. I need to actually now more than ever pick up the phone and call my bestie, or call my loved ones, or say yes to that invitation out to Bingo or whatever. Because staying alone in your room watching Netflix is not going to help you. We just need to see some other human beings. We need some eyeball to eyeball connection to feel grounded, and to feel safe, and to feel whole, and frankly, to feel seen. So when you're feeling vulnerable, that is time to double down on the connection, not shy away from it, do not, basically resist the temptation, as valid as it is, to isolate yourself.
Finally, I want to leave us all with this important reminder. Even though getting laid off or being worried about layoffs feels very much like something else or some big amorphous actor, like a big organization is taking action against you, right? And you are just a victim. You're just on the receiving end of what is happening to you. Remind yourself that you in fact have power and have choice in this moment. And as you remind yourself that you have power and you have control over how you react, remind yourself also that you've been here before.
This is not the first challenge you've navigated. This is not the first surprise in your life. This is not the first unforeseeable change and turn of events that has knocked you off course. I am sure that if you look back through your work history or through your life history, there are moments in which you have pivoted, you have been resilient, you have exercised grit. And I need you to remind yourself that you can do that again. Okay? Because a lot of how we react and respond in unforeseeable circumstances and in moments of uncertainty goes directly back to our identity, who we feel we are and what we feel we are capable of.
One of my favorite researchers, Herminia Ibarra, wrote a great book all about this called, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. And in her book there's a section called in the middle, in which she describes how tricky these moments of transition, these liminal periods of uncertainty can really feel. She writes, “it's always ugly in the middle. At the root of transition is transit, a voyage from one place to another. As in any voyage, there's a departure, a disorienting time of travel, and finally a destination.”, she goes on to say, “to be in transit is to be in the process of leaving one thing without having fully left it, and at the same time entering something else without being fully part of it. It is a gestation period of provisional, tentative identity, when many different selves are possible and none are obvious”. So if you feel like in the wake of a layoff, or even just in light of hearing about layoffs and being anxious about layoffs, you start to spiral into a full on identity crisis, you're not alone, right?
These moments of transition can cause us to deeply reflect on who we are, what we're here for on this planet and who we can be and what we imagine is possible for ourselves. So I want to come back to a truism we've always turned to here at Bossed Up, something that actually, way back in 2013, I wrote into our Bossed Up manifesto, and that is, have confidence in your ability to figure it out. You're on a journey, you're in transit, when you're navigating layoff anxiety. You might not be sure of where you're headed next, but you don't need to know what's next to have confidence in your ability to figure that out. I want you to bet on yourself in these moments of uncertainty. And hopefully we here at Bossed Up can all do the same. I feel like nothing likes running a small business to start to become a little more comfortable with constant uncertainty.
And now I want to hear from you what's been going on in your organization? Has hiring slowed? Is hiring continuing? Are people talking about tightening the belt because of the Trump tariffs that have been put in place? Or because of the economy writ large? The stock market today has been in a free fall. How is that impacting you, your family, your career choices, and your organization? I want to know, my inbox is always open at emilie@bossedup.org or let's keep the conversation going as always after each episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in our Bossed Up LinkedIn group.
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
And as always, you can read a synopsis blog post version of today's episode at bossedup.org/episode501 that's bossedup.org/episode501. It's an easy way to share today's information with those you think could use it. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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