Today was the day we found out more about our intra-corporation merge and layoffs. (Our site is now part of a larger group instead of just being our little group. So far...no obvious day-to-day changes.) Sorry if this post ends up being a stream of thought instead of semi-good paragraphs.
They aren't doing the layoffs until APRIL. April!!! There were rumors for the end of January, but I was expecting February or early March. Pros: people have extra months to save money, and houses will go up for sale in the good selling season. Con: we have to wait three more months to find out what's going on. Three months isn't so bad, but considering that we've already been waiting two it is getting obnoxious. Couple this five month wait with the waits from the last layoff periods and it just means there has been a lot of waiting to find out what's going to happen. (This is somewhat of an understatement. It means there are a lot of "what ifs". It means there is a lot of not spending.)
Oh, there will be around 1100 layoffs across our new group. If they are spread out equally across sites (which they won't be), we would lose about 175 from our site. Those odds don't seem too bad, but one never knows what they are thinking and if our site will be hit badly. There could also be some unexpected people laid off as companies are merging and there will be overlap in what people work on.