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The calendar invite has no agenda. HR is on it. Your manager will not look at you. Someone reads from a document, uses the word "restructuring," and by the time you get back to your desk your laptop has already been wiped. There is a PDF in your personal inbox with a signature line and a date.

Last month, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, US employers announced 52,881 job cuts. That was the lowest August since 2022 and still 58 percent above July: calmer market, same meetings. The stated reason shifted too. Restructuring led at 16,173, while AI fell to the fourth most cited reason after leading for five straight months. Fewer people are being told a model replaced them. More are being told the org chart did.

Here is what nobody says in the room. The company planned this for weeks and gave you an afternoon. That asymmetry is the whole game, and it is fixable, because four separate clocks start the day you are cut and the company controls exactly one of them.

None of this is legal advice. It is a map of which questions to ask before the first signature.

If you are 40 or older and the agreement waives age discrimination claims, federal law requires the employer to give you at least 21 days to consider it, and 45 days if you are part of a group layoff. After you sign, you get seven more days to revoke, and neither side can shorten that. The agreement also has to tell you in writing to consult a lawyer.

Under 40, there is no federal minimum, but the EEOC's own guidance to workers says the same thing in plain language: if you are being rushed, ask for more time and put the request in writing. A company that will not grant a week to read a document releasing every claim you have is telling you something.

The fear that keeps people signing at the table is that the offer evaporates. It does not. Severance is a budgeted line item approved before the meeting. Send this within an hour of getting the document:

A severance agreement is a template with fields. The fields are where the money moves. Weeks of pay per year of service. Employer-paid health premiums for a set number of months. An extended window to exercise vested equity, or acceleration of a slice that has not vested. A mutual non-disparagement clause instead of one that only binds you. An agreed reference and confirmed rehire eligibility. A commitment not to contest your unemployment claim.

Before you counter, separate what they are offering from what they owe. If the employer has 100 or more employees and cut 50 or more at your site, the federal WARN Act generally required 60 calendar days of written notice. Companies that skip the notice often pay 60 days of wages instead and present it as generosity. It is not severance. It is the notice period in cash. Ask, in writing, whether any part of the package is WARN pay.

One thing no agreement can take: your right to file a charge with the EEOC survives any release, and you do not have to return the severance to file one. You sign away damages, not your voice.

Your COBRA notice may take weeks to arrive, and that is fine. You have 60 days to elect COBRA, counted from the later of when your coverage ended or when the notice reached you. Once you elect, you have another 45 days to make the first payment, and coverage is retroactive to the day your plan ended. You can wait most of that window and still be covered for the gap.

The catch is price: the full premium, both halves, plus up to two percent in fees. This is why employer-paid COBRA months are among the cheapest asks in a counter: the company already knows the number, and it costs them less than salary.

The Marketplace is the other door: losing job-based coverage opens a 60 day special enrollment period, and a subsidized plan can undercut COBRA by a wide margin. Run both numbers in week one.

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Unemployment insurance is not charity. Your employer paid premiums into it on your behalf, and filing late costs weeks that never come back. How severance interacts with benefits is a state question: some states delay payments while severance runs, some do not, and a few decide based on whether it was a lump sum. Do not guess. File, disclose the severance, and let the state calculate.

While the agreement is open, ask for one sentence: the company will not contest your claim. Most agree, because contesting costs them time. Get it in the document, not in an email.

The week of a layoff is the only week your leverage with the company goes up instead of down. They want a signature. You want three things that cost them nothing: a written reference from your manager, confirmation of what HR tells verification calls (usually dates and title only), and your status marked eligible for rehire. Ask before you sign, because after you sign the incentive to help you disappears.

Your coworkers are scattering too. Send the LinkedIn recommendation requests today, while everyone is still angry on your behalf. Do not take company data, client lists, or files. The agreement you are negotiating has a clause about exactly that, and it is the one they will enforce.

Your first instinct is to write the LinkedIn post and fire off twenty applications before dinner. Both are their worst versions on day one: the post reads as shock, and the applications carry a resume with no updated headline and a summary written in anger.

Take the week to finish the counter, file the claim, and pick the coverage. Then write the announcement once, calmly, with a specific ask, and apply to roles you chose rather than roles that were open. The people who sign on day one and apply on day two are not faster. They are just done negotiating before they realized they were in one.

Four asks, one paragraph, no argument. Say what you will sign, not what you are upset about. You will not get all four. You will almost never get zero.

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