It was clear that they'd overhired, there wasn't enough work for all the workers so we all sort of saw it coming. I'd had some attendance issues related to depression so I knew that if they did a round of layoffs I was vulnerable to due that. By today I'd worked for about 5 1/2 months in the company, from October to February. They told me they were laying me off and I told them I'd seen it coming and no hard feelings.
They then deliberately postdated the “last day” to march 1 so I'd have another month of bennies and gave me 2 weeks PTO to help me look for a new job — this also, “coincidentally,” stretched my time worked so that I just barely qualified for unemployment in my state (which has a cutoff for jobs worked less than 6 months) and made sure the paperwork reflected that it was a layoff, not a firing. Also, despit being a ground floor level worker and not even on the job for a full year, and despite being an at-will state, I got a small severance package. And they made sure that I knew that I was eligible for rehire.
Basically they bent over backwards, at least relative to a lot of at-will employers, to make the layoff less hard than it could have been. All told, 10/10, would get laid off there again. They did everything they should have done and nothing they shouldn't.
For the record the company's name is Modivcare and if you are a call center type, they're probably the best place I've ever worked at. If you need an entry level job and can get in there, I highly recommend it.