You just got a layoff email. Here's what to do in the next 7 days.

Tech layoffs have cut more than 85,000 jobs in 2026 so far. Oracle eliminated up to 30,000 roles on March 31. Amazon cut 16,000. Block cut 40% of its workforce. Most people find out the same way: an email, sometimes at 6am, with no call from a manager and no warning.

If you're reading this because it just happened to you, the shock is normal. So is the instinct to panic-update your resume and start applying to everything within the hour. Don't. The order you handle the next seven days in has more effect on your outcome than how fast you move.

These are the seven things that matter most in the week after a layoff. The order is intentional.

Step 1: Don't sign anything yet

This is the most important thing in the first 24 hours. A severance agreement is a legal document. Signing it typically means releasing your right to sue your employer for anything related to your employment. You have time: federal law (the OWBPA, for workers over 40) gives you at least 21 days to review a severance agreement, and 7 days to revoke it after signing.

Read every page. Pay specific attention to the non-disparagement clause, any non-compete or non-solicitation provisions, the scope of the claims you're releasing, and the timeline for receiving severance payments.

If the agreement includes a non-compete, note the geographic scope and duration. California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma don't enforce non-competes. If you're in a state that does, this affects which companies you can join and when.

You don't need a lawyer for a standard severance review. For a package worth more than $50,000, or any agreement with unusual IP or non-compete language, an employment attorney for a one-hour review is worth the cost.

Step 2: Understand exactly what you're owed

There's no single formula. 2026's packages have ranged from four weeks of base pay plus one week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks (Oracle's reported structure), up to the 16-to-20-week minimums Google and Meta offered laid-off staff in 2023 and 2024. Whatever your number is, check a few things before you accept it at face value.

Severance is taxed as supplemental income, typically at a flat 30% federal rate. The gross figure in your agreement isn't what hits your bank account.

Your equity is separate from severance. Unvested RSUs are usually forfeited at termination. Vested shares stay yours. Check your exact vesting cliff date: if a vest was days or weeks away, that's worth raising with HR or an employment attorney before you sign anything.

Health insurance runs through COBRA, which lets you continue your current coverage for up to 18 months at full cost, typically $600 to $700 a month for an individual and $1,500 or more for a family. Check whether your employer is covering any part of that cost, and what your last day of employer-sponsored coverage actually is.

If you had a bonus or commission partially earned but not yet paid, ask specifically about proration. Companies handle this inconsistently, and it's often negotiable. Most US states also require employers to pay out accrued, unused vacation. Check your state's rules and your balance.

Step 3: Know your market rate before you apply anywhere

This is where most people make the costliest mistake. They get the layoff notice, update their resume in a panic, and start applying to everything without knowing what their background is actually worth on the current market. An offer comes in, it feels better than unemployment, and they take something 20 to 30% below what they could have negotiated.

A well-known former employer is still an asset on your resume. Hiring managers already have a sense of what engineers, cloud architects, and enterprise product managers coming out of a large tech company are trained to do. The market is pricing that experience right now, in live job postings, whether you look it up or not.

Before you send a single application, upload your resume to PayScope and see what the current market is paying for your specific profile: role, level, location, years of experience. PayScope pulls from active job postings rather than self-reported surveys, so the number reflects what employers are advertising right now, not what someone claimed to earn two years ago. Our salary benchmarking tools overview walks through how the different tools compare if you want to check more than one.

Your market number does two things. It tells you which offers deserve serious negotiation and which don't. And it tells you whether a company is wasting your time before you've sunk three interview rounds into it.

Step 4: Position your background for the current market

Map your last role to where that skill sells today, not to the company you just left. Cloud infrastructure experience transfers directly across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle Cloud. Multi-cloud exposure, which many infrastructure engineers already have without realizing it counts, is one of the most consistently high-demand profiles in 2026.

Enterprise software and ERP experience (Oracle Fusion, SAP, NetSuite) is harder to find outside a small set of large vendors, which is exactly why mid-size companies pay a premium for it. The same is true for deep database expertise and enterprise Java, regardless of which company's stack you learned it on.

The framing matters. Your resume shouldn't say you were "affected by a layoff." It should say what you built, what you delivered, and that you're available. Layoffs are industry-wide news in 2026. Any hiring manager reading your profile already knows what's happening across the sector. You don't need to explain it. You need to make the case for what you bring.

Update your LinkedIn headline and your "Open to Work" setting before the end of the week. Recruiters move fast when a large layoff hits the news, and your window to show up at the top of search results is the next two to three weeks.

Step 5: File for unemployment immediately

Unemployment benefits in the US aren't means-tested. You paid into them throughout your employment, and you're entitled to them if you were laid off. Apply through your state's unemployment portal within the first week. Most states have a waiting period before benefits begin, so the earlier you file, the earlier payments start.

One timing detail that trips people up: if your employer is paying severance as continuation pay through a specific end date, rather than as a lump sum, your eligibility start date may be delayed until that period ends. Check your state's rules on how severance affects unemployment timing. California, for example, treats lump-sum severance differently from continuation pay.

Step 6: Activate your network selectively

The instinct after a layoff is to post on LinkedIn and tell everyone. That's not wrong, but it's not efficient either. A generic "I'm open to new opportunities" post competes with thousands of others from the same layoff wave.

What works better: reach out directly to 15 to 20 people who either work at companies you'd want to join or who are well-connected in your space. A specific, short message outperforms a broadcast post. Something like "I was laid off last week. I'm looking for [specific role type] at [type of company]. Do you know anyone I should talk to?" is a message that gets forwarded, because it's concrete enough to act on.

Companies that have kept hiring through 2026's layoffs cluster around a few areas: cloud infrastructure providers, enterprise SaaS companies migrating customers off legacy platforms, and healthcare technology firms. Your professional network is the fastest path into any of them, faster than any job board.

Step 7: Negotiate your next offer with data, not desperation

The biggest financial error laid-off professionals make is accepting the first offer that comes in. Unemployment creates urgency, and urgency creates bad decisions. Most offers have room to move: typically 10 to 20% on base salary, plus equity, a signing bonus, and remote work terms.

The advantage in a negotiation goes to the person who knows their number before the conversation starts. If you've done Step 3, you can say "based on current market data for this role and location, I was expecting something in the range of X." That's a fundable statement, not a wish.

And if you are worried that countering at all could cost you the offer, that fear is mostly mistaken: see what actually gets offers rescinded and how to negotiate without risking it.

What these skills are worth right now

The roles hit hardest by 2026's layoffs are also some of the most portable in enterprise tech. Based on current US job posting data, here's where the market sits for six commonly affected profiles:

Source: PayScope market data, live job postings, last 12 months, collected August 2026.

These ranges reflect base salary from current postings. Total compensation at equity-heavy companies runs higher. For a benchmark specific to your role, level, and city, run your resume through PayScope for a current market rate.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does severance in 2026's tech layoffs compare across companies? There's no industry standard. Oracle's reported US formula was four weeks of base pay plus one week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks, which is on the lower end of what large tech companies have offered. Google and Meta's 2023 to 2024 rounds started at 16 to 20 weeks minimum. Where your package lands depends on your tenure, level, and how the company chose to structure the cuts. Senior employees with specialized skills usually have more room to negotiate than they realize.

How long does it take to actually receive a severance payment? Once you've signed the agreement, severance is typically processed within 2 to 4 weeks of your separation date. Some companies pay it as a lump sum; others spread it out as continuation pay through a set end date, which also affects when your unemployment eligibility starts.

Can I negotiate my severance offer? Yes. Severance is negotiable, especially for senior employees and specialized or leadership roles. The most negotiable elements are the cash amount, COBRA coverage duration, equity treatment, and non-compete scope. Companies expect some percentage of laid-off employees to ask. The downside risk of asking is close to zero.

What happens to my stock options or RSUs after a layoff? Unvested equity is typically forfeited at termination. Vested RSUs are yours to keep. Check the exact date of your next vesting cliff and whether an accelerated vesting provision applies under involuntary termination. If a vesting event was days or weeks away, raise it with HR or an attorney before you sign.

Should I worry about a non-compete clause? It depends heavily on your state. California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma don't enforce employee non-competes. Most other states enforce them to varying degrees. Read the clause for its geographic scope, duration, and definition of "competitor." A clause covering "any company in the enterprise software market" is broader than one limited to a handful of named competitors.

How do I explain a layoff in interviews? One sentence, stated plainly: "My previous employer went through a restructuring that affected my role." Then redirect to what you're looking for. Layoffs across tech are common knowledge in 2026, and most interviewers already assume it wasn't performance-related. You don't need to over-explain it.

A layoff email is a rough start to any week. The people who come out ahead of a wave like this one are the ones who knew exactly what they were worth when they walked into their next interview. Before that first interview, upload your resume to PayScope and get a current market rate for your exact background. If your next offer comes in below that number, you'll know it, and you'll know what to do about it. Our guide on what to do when you're underpaid covers the rest.