How vulnerable are you to layoffs?

The Layoff Calculator is a project that aims to provide a data-driven overview of your layoff probability. By crunching immense amounts of data from sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- the most comprehensive data provider on US occupations -- the project generates six core insights into your job security. Please note that the results are not to be used in any way for professional career advice.

The calculator processes your answers to analyze forward-looking and historical datasets to calculate a “layoff probability figure”. You can use this to determine how vulnerable you may be to a company downturn.

The five “factor explanations” are very accurate, as they are direct data-driven insights. The final figure essentially considers these five factors to give you a general direction on how secure your job is. For reference, a figure of under 5% is considered the upper range for a healthy unemployment rate.

Extensive research and user testing was done to arrive at these final four questions, as they needed to provide the most comprehensive overview of your current job situation, while also avoiding an overload of questions.

The calculator is designed to be simple. It could always ask dozens, if not hundreds, of questions, but that would defeat one of the calculator’s principles -- simplicity.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics API, as well as the Financial Modeling Prep API, are used to regularly update datasets for the calculator.

The project front-end was built using React, GraphQL, and styled-components, and was deployed using Netlify. The back-end is powered using AWS API Gateway with an AWS Lambda function for scalability. There are also several AWS EC2 instances that regularly update datasets for the calculator.

Please reach out to the developer, Harrison Hur, for questions or comments about the project. His contact information can be found on his personal website, harrisonhur.com.