A Promotion Did Not Protect Her From a Layoff. It May Have Made Her More Vulnerable.

Nearly half of women laid off in a new national survey said they received no severance or support. For one former CDC employee, years at the agency offered little protection after she had recently moved into a new role.

For Gina, a promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should have represented stability. She had already spent several years with the agency, built experience inside the federal workforce and recently moved into a new role. But when layoffs reached her part of the organization, the years she had already invested there did not carry the weight she expected.

What mattered instead was how recently she had entered the position. Gina had been in the promoted role for less than a year, and workers who fell within a particular employment timeframe became vulnerable to termination. Her broader tenure at the CDC did not remove her from that group. She received severance when she was let go, but the package was not substantial enough to create much of a financial cushion once a steady paycheck disappeared.