The poet T S Eliot was wrong.
April is not the cruellest month, at least not for employees. December and January are.
Slideshow
Best and worst months for mass layoffs
The future of jobs
Those two months, we have found, are the worst for mass layoffs at companies. We looked at the US Bureau of Labor's monthly statistics for mass layoffs going back a decade to see which months accounted for the largest percentage of the pink slips issued in bulk by US companies during any particular year.
The BLS considers a mass layoff to be when an employer sheds at least 50 jobs.
Slideshow
What to do when you're laid off
Should you take that buyout?
In 2001, it found more than 21,000 such blizzards of pink slips, or 'events' as it calls them. That was the worst year of the past decade, as it included fallout from the bursting of the dotcom bubble and the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC.
To provide some silver lining to the current black cloud, mass layoffs at the comparative point in 2001 were running at 28 per cent higher than they are during this credit-crisis blighted year.
Slideshow
How to cushion the blow of layoffs
Keeping your job
How the events scale up to total lost jobs varies from employer to employer, and the data counts the job when it is lost, not when the company announces planned redundancies, which are often spun and phased for PR reasons. But to take an example, September's 1,292 mass layoffs represented 235,681 lost jobs.
Over the 10 years we looked at, December averaged out at 12.6% of the annual total and January at 12.2%. If mass layoffs were spread evenly throughout the year, each month would account for 8.3%.
The best month? August, with an average of just 5.3%. Summertime, and the living's easy.
Or at least it is if you and your co-workers survive July, the third worst month on average for mass layoffs.
December and January are dangerous months for job holders because that's when annual budgets flip over at many companies. Similarly, July marks the halfway point in the year.
If you're nervous about your job going, don't watch the clock, watch the calendar. Goal No 1 for worried workers: making it to February. Winter does not keep us warm.
