Is this 'laid off' in the individual (or even team) sense or 'laid off' in the 'company went bankrupt' sense? I'd guess your exposure to the latter would be significantly higher in startup land than in the real world.
The first. Most of the people I know who were laid off get, at best, an vague promise to blnot fight unemployment claims and even those aren't always honored. Other than California most states allow NDAs and non competes which companies rely on heavily to threaten employees if they fought a lay off at all
If there's no notice then that's pretty crap. Every employment contract I've ever (in Australia) had has specified some fixed amount of notice required on either side to terminate employment (usually 2-4 weeks, sometimes increasing with time spent at the company) plus the company has to pay out any accrued annual leave, long service leave etc. This stuff is owed regardless of why the employee leaves.
Even if they tell you to go home and not come back, they still have to pay out the notice period and other outstanding amounts. It usually works out that you're covered for a month or two before you start to lose out financially.
I've never actually encountered it myself (and in fact just had to look it up [1]) but if you're made redundant then there's also a mandatory redundancy payout which starts at 4 weeks' pay for an employee who's been there between 1 and 2 years, and scales up to 16 weeks for employees of 10 years or over.
(The one time I've been 'made redundant' it was never official, I was working for a games company and they just kind of stopped paying us so we eventually just kind of stopped going. Lots of people lost significant amounts of money in owed wages.)
Edit: As for noncompetes, I think they're pretty universally held to be unenforceable attempts to bluster employees into believing they can't leave, but I can't imagine a company which actually tried to enforce one would ever be able to hire quality staff again. It'd be suicide.
>an vague promise to blnot fight unemployment claims
How does unemployment work where you are? Why would a previous employer be involved in the process of you claiming unemployment? The only thing I can think of, and also why they would be inclined to fight it, is if the payments come out of their pocket. If that's the case, then isn't that sort of just severance but with a different name slapped on it?
They pay unemployment insurance to the state, which goes up if they have more claims from ex employees. The government gives them the chance to contest any unemployment claims.
You can also get in a limbo where you accept an offer from employer A, give notice to your current employer B, then employer A rescinds the job offer from you before you start or even early in employment. The state then considers you not having been employed with employer A and having quit voluntarily from employer B, so they deny unemployment payments
My understanding is that employers in the US pay for unemployment insurance and their rates go up if the number of claims go up. So they don't pay directly but they do indirectly.
