The fortune 50 company I worked at would plan their layoffs in batches of 10 so they could skirt the requirement. When large cuts did happen, the press completely ignored the white-collar cuts.

The way I have seen layoff planning happen is small groups meeting at a relatively remote conference room after hours, then a larger group of managers being scheduled in to be made aware, finally followed by the first group meeting just before the axing happens. This pattern became predictable because these meetings would inevitably have bottled sodas on ice, and I would run into the empty ice buckets early in the morning while getting coffee. The number of ice buckets would tell me how far along the layoff planning was.

Another way to predict whether layoffs are being planned is to look at the online calendar of your management chain, even if the only thing you can see is busy/free. If after hours and weekend meetings start showing up on all of their calendars (these are never 15 minute affairs), or worse offsite meetings you know what’s up.

In general, I see a trend during recessions to convert FTEs to contractors, and contractors to outsourced and offshored contractors. If your team has more employees than contractors, observe whether additional demand leads to the hiring of contractors or FTEs – if contractors are preferred, warm up your job search.
That said, smart managers will purposely understaff critical positions so that there’s no potential replacement for this one person – just to deflect any layoff to other teams.

A side effect of visible layoff planning nobody seems to talk about is contractor reaction to FTE layoffs. Because contractors are typically cut before employees, they will move faster, doubly so if they relocated for the gig. I knew a P&L was planning a layoff because all their out of town contractors left on their own over the course of a week. Entire outsourcing efforts got scuttled that way across several clients.