“California’s WARN law requires certain companies with more than 75 employees to provide 60 days advance notice of a plant closing or mass layoff involving 50 or more employees.”

Go to the link above and type in your company’s name and city to see if there is a planned layoff.  I think it is better to have a bit of advance notice rather than be  taken by surprise.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-economy5-2009sep05,0,3045652.story

The interesting part of the article for me was not about unemployment rising from 9.4% to 9.7% in July, but the part about the new  face of the laid off employee.

“During the previous two recessions, in 1990-91 and 2001, people in their mid-40s to mid-50s continued to show employment gains as younger workers felt the brunt of the cutbacks. But since the current downturn began in December 2007, employment in the 45-to-54 age group has fallen by more than 1.2 million, according to the Labor Department.”

The trend is troubling because that prime earning age group of 45-54 are will represent a high number of homeowners who will be unable to make their mortgage payments and will quickly fall into default status.   A study I read revealed most American households are unable to survive longer than 2 months if there is disruption in the income.

Unemployed workers have a difficult time getting another well paying job in 2 months……