It's near the end of the quarter and holidays tends to be less productive time for employees with many taking extra time off anyway. Even with the very generous severance is still makes sense to announce these layoffs before some of the least productive times.

Also personally, I think I'd rather know about being laid off before going into the new year.

I'm assuming to get it done before the end of the fiscal year.

There's been lots of big layoffs throughout the year. There's always an upcoming holiday

Well, from the week of thanksgiving to NYE productivity is shit anyway. People are planning vacations, gift buying, visiting relatives/friends.

Doing layoff before that is beneficial for employer to save on labor cost (not paying low productivity time), and employee (allows better planning)

EOY financials, usually.

If you have to do layoffs, the best time is now. The second best time is a couple weeks before financial reporting ends.

And as I was reading these comments, a news item popped up for me...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-companies-do-layoffs-around...

As soon as the economy recovers, doing these kinds of layoffs will be terrible for the companies reputation. Right now, it’s more like “who can blame them, everyone is doing it”.

To all the people saying end of year financials, most places I've worked at have had their Q4 not end in December (for revenue smoothing).

End of quarter, I suppose

Employers can save out on paying holiday PTO