If you’re looking for a silver lining, here’s one: you can sleep in 'till 10 every day!
Good luck!
QFT Networking is the key. Call everybody you know. tell them you are declaring free agency and you are shopping the league for a better offer.
They will laugh, but if anything is out there, they will tell you.
If nothing lands right away, stay in touch with those people.*
I got fired last December 21 (happy birthday and a very Merry Christmas)
A friend hired me on that night. He and I both knew it was temporary, until I found a management job.
I kept my network contacts active, and one of them called me at the end of September. Oct 5th I started what is turning out to be damn near my dream job.
Good luck!
*Just call them up every so often to keep you name in front of them. Talk about the industry you are in, changes in personnel at your old company and other companies. The weather, just stay in touch.
Thanks guys, I’ve already started networking and have some preliminary leads. We’ll see what happens.
It doth stink. I was laid off in August, along with about 100 of my colleagues (our agency lost its biggest account). I networked like crazy with friends and former co-workers, and landed on my feet within 6 weeks; I know that many of us who were in the layoff are already working again, so the job market may not be quite as dire as some news reports make it sound. Still, a layoff right before Christmas is pretty stinky. I wish you luck!
Hey I got laid off in 2007 too!
I’ve been doing contract work since then. I’ll be 50 in February and each layoff gets more scary but I manage to find something.
It took me 6 months to find a job after my first layoff, got laid off from that after 9 months, then it took 3 months to find a job (with the company I worked at before the job that I got laid off from in 2007), worked there 2.25 years, got laid off, then hired back after 2 months, then laid off again after 6 more months, then it took me 2 months to find a job with the company and department that hired me after my first layoff. The woman who I interviewed (and now work) with is the one I passed my work off to when they laid me off in 2008. Another woman I worked with from the company I worked 2.25 years for remembered me from when I worked there in the late '90s. I guess you could call that passive networking. So, 5 contract stints with 2 companies. They like me, they just don’t want to tie the knot 
. The uncertainty at the end of a contract (will it get renewed) is wearying but the money’s good and there’s less BS.
If you work with contractors and contract work is something that might appeal to you (the longer you go without a paycheck the more appealing it gets) find out who their agencies are and get in touch.
Also as soon as all your settlements are settled think about applying for unemployment. At the very least it will keep you from burning through your savings so fast.
Best of luck.