Laid Off: How to Prepare, Explain It, and Find Your Next Job

If You Think a Layoff Is Coming

No single signal settles it. A hiring freeze, a new finance director brought in to cut costs, your team's projects handed elsewhere, a manager who stops inviting you to planning meetings: several at once are worth acting on rather than waiting for certainty. Once your access is revoked, anything that only existed on work systems is gone.

Save the evidence of your own work

• Performance reviews, and commendation emails you could never reconstruct from memory
• The numbers behind your achievements (revenue, cost savings, team size, budget managed) while you can still see the dashboards
• Your contract, your written statement of employment particulars, and anything in writing about pay, bonus or shares
• Personal contact details for the colleagues you would want as referees

Do the rest while you still have a salary

• Read your contract for the notice period, any enhanced redundancy pay and any pay in lieu of notice clause. The guide to UK notice periods explains how notice is counted and paid, so I will not repeat it here.
• Update your CV now. The week after a redundancy, under stress and without your own numbers, is the worst time to write it.
• Ask for LinkedIn recommendations while the people who would write them are still your colleagues. LinkedIn headline and summary examples covers the profile itself.
• Work out your runway: essential monthly spending against savings. That number is what stops you taking the wrong job in week six.
• Contact Jobcentre Plus. GOV.UK says its Rapid Response Service can help if you suspect you are going to be made redundant, during your notice period, and for up to 13 weeks after, with job searching, benefits information, training and travel costs.

What You Are Owed When You Are Made Redundant

Statutory redundancy pay

According to GOV.UK, you are normally entitled to statutory redundancy pay if you are an employee and have worked for your current employer for 2 years or more. The amount comes from section 162 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and depends on your age during each full year of service:

• half a week's pay for each full year you were under 22
• one week's pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41
• one and a half weeks' pay for each full year you were 41 or older

Length of service is capped at 20 years, counting back from the end. Your weekly pay is the average you earned per week over the 12 weeks before the day you got your redundancy notice, and it is capped too: if you were made redundant on or after 6 April 2026, the cap is £751 a week and the most statutory redundancy pay you can get is £22,530.

That is the legal minimum. Acas notes that employers might top it up with enhanced or contractual redundancy pay, so check your contract and staff handbook before you accept a figure. If your employer does not pay, Acas says you have 6 months minus 1 day from the date your job ends to claim through an employment tribunal. Every figure above, and the worked example below, is for England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own figures: nidirect gives a current weekly cap of £783 and a maximum of £23,490.

Worked example: redundancy pay with the 2026 cap

An invented example, using the real statutory rules. Sam started with his employer on his 35th birthday and his employment ends on his 45th birthday, after 6 April 2026. His average pay over the 12 weeks before his redundancy notice was £880 a week. There is no enhanced scheme.

1. Count the full years in each age band. Counting back from the end, Sam was 44, 43, 42 and 41 during the last four years: 4 years at 41 or older. He was 40, 39, 38, 37, 36 and 35 during the six before that: 6 years at 22 to 40.
2. Convert to weeks. 4 × 1.5 = 6 weeks, plus 6 × 1 = 6 weeks. Total: 12 weeks' pay.
3. Apply the weekly cap. £880 is above £751, so the calculation uses £751.
4. Multiply. 12 × £751 = £9,012. Without the cap it would have been 12 × £880 = £10,560, so the cap costs Sam £1,548.
5. Tax. £9,012 is under £30,000, so none of it is taxable.
6. Add notice, separately. Ten full years gives Sam at least 10 weeks' statutory notice. If his employer pays in lieu, GOV.UK says he should get all the basic pay he would have received during the notice period, and that payment is taxed as wages.

Real dates rarely line up with birthdays, so run your own figures through GOV.UK's redundancy pay calculator and compare the result with the letter your employer sends. I would ask for that letter to list redundancy pay, notice pay and holiday pay as separate lines, because they are calculated and taxed differently.

Tax on the payout

GOV.UK says statutory redundancy pay under £30,000 is not taxable. The £30,000 threshold applies to termination payments, and HMRC's Employment Income Manual is explicit that it does not apply to post-employment notice pay.

Paid time off to look for work

This is the entitlement people forget to use. If you have worked for your employer continuously for 2 years or more, including the notice period, Acas says your employer must allow a reasonable amount of time off during your notice to look and apply for another job, or to arrange training, and can only refuse on reasonable grounds.

The pay is limited. Section 53 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 caps it at 40% of a week's pay for the whole notice period. In the Acas example, Robyn earns £500 for a five-day week, takes five days off during a 12-week notice period, and is paid £200 for them. I would use the time anyway, and ask for it by email with the dates of your interviews, so there is a record if it is refused.

Three things that can cost you money

• Turning down an alternative job. GOV.UK says you may lose statutory redundancy pay if you unreasonably turn down suitable alternative employment. You have the right to a 4-week trial period in the new role; tell your employer within that window if it is not suitable, or you lose the right to claim.
• Signing a settlement agreement in a hurry. For a settlement agreement to be valid, Acas says you must get advice from a relevant independent adviser, who must be insured. I would not sign one on the day it arrives, however reasonable the number looks.
• Leaving early for a new job the wrong way. You can keep your redundancy pay if you start somewhere else before your notice ends, but only by giving counter-notice at the right time. The notice period guide covers how.

Money While You Search: New Style JSA and Universal Credit

There are two benefits to check, and they work on different principles.

New Style Jobseeker's Allowance is based on your National Insurance record, not your bank balance. The eligibility page says you need to have paid Class 1 National Insurance contributions, usually in the last 2 to 3 years, be under State Pension age, be in Great Britain, and not be working 16 or more hours a week. Your savings and your partner's savings do not affect the claim. It pays for up to 182 days, at up to £75.65 a week if you are under 25 and up to £95.55 if you are 25 or over.

Universal Credit is means-tested. GOV.UK's guidance on money, savings and investments says you must usually have no more than £16,000, whether you claim alone or with a partner. Below £6,000 there is no effect; between £6,000 and £16,000, payments are reduced by £4.35 for every £250. The same guidance lists redundancy pay among the things you need to report.

My view: if you have a redundancy payout in the bank, look at New Style JSA first, because the payout does not count against it. You can get Universal Credit at the same time as New Style JSA or instead of it, so if your savings are low, check both.

Rebuild Your CV Before the First Application

Updating your CV once and sending it everywhere produces the familiar result: dozens of applications and almost no replies. Many employers screen applications with an applicant tracking system, and a CV written in your old employer's vocabulary does not match the words in someone else's job description.

• Lead your most recent role with results. "Cut month-end close from nine days to six" says more than "responsible for financial reporting".
• Rewrite the summary for the job you want next, in two or three sentences, not as a list of years and adjectives.
• Condense old roles. Work from more than fifteen years ago rarely earns more than a line.
• Tailor the summary, skills and top bullets for every application. Those three carry most of the match with the job description; how to tailor your CV to a job description shows the method.

Run the Search Like a Job

Start with people, not job boards. I would spend the first week messaging former managers and colleagues individually, not with a mass post. Mention one thing you worked on together, say what kind of role you are looking for, and ask one small question: do they know anyone at a company on your list, or would they act as a referee? A person who has seen your work can vouch for what a CV only asserts. LinkedIn message templates has wording for these notes.

Build a target list. Twenty to thirty employers you would actually want to work for, checked directly on their careers pages. Set job alerts for everything else, so new roles come to you instead of you scrolling for them.

Set a weekly number you can sustain. I would rather send ten tailored applications a week for three months than forty generic ones in a fortnight and then stall. Log every application with the job description and the CV version you sent; how to track job applications has a simple format. After a month the log tells you which kinds of role answer and which never do.

Prepare for interviews before you are invited. Invitations can come with a day's notice. Have your answer about the redundancy ready (below) and a short list of examples from your last role that map to the jobs you are applying for. Common job interview questions covers the rest.

For the wider plan, including where to look and how to split your time, see the job search strategy guide.

Explaining the Layoff in an Interview

It arrives as "why did you leave your last role?" or "I see you left in March, can you tell me about that?" The answer has the same shape every time: the reason in one factual sentence, what you have done since, and why this role. Not apologetic, not bitter, and short. A long answer suggests the subject still needs defending.

In the UK, "my role was made redundant" is the phrase to use. It says the job was cut, which is exactly what redundancy means, and interviewers here hear it that way. On the CV, say nothing: give the dates as they stand. If you are still on notice or garden leave, the role is current. If the gap has grown past a few months, see how to explain an employment gap on your CV.

If your role was made redundant

If you are still on notice or garden leave

If you were dismissed rather than made redundant

This needs more care, but the shape holds. Do not call a dismissal a redundancy: a reference that contradicts you can end the process, and references are where it will surface. Say what went wrong, what changed, and close the subject.

Whatever the reason, you do not owe an interviewer your personal circumstances. If the interviewer asks a follow-up, answer it in one sentence and bring the conversation back to the role.

When the Search Runs Long

Follow up on silence once. I would send one short note about ten working days after applying to a role you really want, then leave it.

Change something every month. If the log shows no interviews after four weeks, the problem is the CV or the targeting, not the volume. Rewrite the summary, drop the category of role that never replies, and ask one person in your field to read an application before you send it.

Do not take the wrong job out of fear. Your runway figure is there for this moment. A role with clear warning signs from the interview is usually a worse outcome than another month of searching, and a second redundancy a year later is harder to explain than a gap. If the money is running out, contract or temporary work at your level bridges the gap without committing you to a step down. Once an offer arrives, negotiate it as you would from a job: an employer that offers you a role wants you, whatever your current situation.

Sources

• GOV.UK: Redundancy, your rights: redundancy pay
• GOV.UK: Calculate your statutory redundancy pay
• Employment Rights Act 1996, section 162 (amount of a redundancy payment)
• Employment Rights Act 1996, section 53 (pay for time off to look for work)
• Acas: Your rights during redundancy, redundancy pay
• Acas: Your rights during redundancy, finding a job with a new employer
• Acas: Settlement agreements
• nidirect: Redundancy pay (Northern Ireland)
• GOV.UK: Redundancy, notice periods and notice pay
• GOV.UK: Redundancy, tax and National Insurance
• HMRC Employment Income Manual EIM13505: termination payments, £30,000 threshold
• GOV.UK: Redundancy, suitable alternative employment
• GOV.UK: Being made redundant, finding work and claiming benefits (Rapid Response Service)
• GOV.UK: Jobseeker's Allowance, how it works
• GOV.UK: Jobseeker's Allowance, eligibility
• GOV.UK: Universal Credit, eligibility
• GOV.UK: Universal Credit, money, savings and investments