Why the U.S. and Puerto Rico are the worst places to suffer a layoff

Hundreds of thousands of employees were laid off in 2022 in sweeping job cuts that affected nearly every industry. Losing a job is challenging as is, but could the place an employee calls home make it even harder? 

To provide some insight into which locations are the best and worst for laid off workers, job insights platform Lensa ranked locales on factors like notice periods and unemployment rates, both of which contribute to how hard or easy it will be to find new work. They also analyzed compensation data and fair pay laws in each location.  

From how many tenured years a country or territory requires employees to have in order to receive severance pay, to whether or not they're able to use unused paid leave before they go, many factors go into what makes a layoff more manageable for workers. 

Read more: 10 best and worst cities to find a job in 2023

Puerto Rico and the U.S. came in as the worst two locations for employees to get laid off, with layoff scores of 1.2 and 1.17 out of 10. Neither has guaranteed severance pay — even for tenured employees of over a decade — or are given guaranteed notice of impending job cuts. Out of nine possible redundancy laws, which dictate how fair workers are compensated when a company is restructuring, Puerto Rico and the U.S. only enforce three and two respectively, leaving laid off employees at risk of missing out on substantial amounts of money and benefits they would otherwise be entitled to. 

This compares to Sierra Leone and Egypt, which earned a layoff score of 8.80 and 7.75 out of 10, respectively. Sierra Leone exercises six out of nine redundancy laws, and employees are guaranteed at least a 13-week notice period before being laid off, and employees with a 10-year tenure can secure an up to 132-week severance pay package. Egypt offers 4.3 weeks guaranteed severance pay for employees with only one year of tenure, all the way to 54.2 weeks for those with a decade or more of tenure. 

See what other locations made Lensa's list of the best and worst places for layoffs.