4 Ways to Protect Your Job Before a Recession Hits

It pays to take these essential steps.

Are we headed for a recession in 2023? Many financial experts seem to think so.

The Federal Reserve has a major inflation problem on its hands, and it's been aggressively raising interest rates in an effort to slow the pace of consumer spending. If consumers start balking at higher borrowing rates for loans and credit cards, they might start to curb their spending, thereby narrowing the gap between supply and demand that caused inflation to start surging last year.

Of course, the problem here is that the Fed is hoping to strike an ideal balance -- it wants consumers to cut back on spending modestly, but not to an extreme degree. The latter may end up happening, though, and that could fuel a recession in 2023. And from there, we could see unemployment levels increase nationally.

If that's something you're worried about, that's understandable. The idea of losing a job can be extremely unsettling. And while you can take some steps to protect yourself financially, such as shoring up your savings account, you can also take some steps to potentially reduce your risk of losing your job during a downturn. Here are some moves to make along those lines.

1. Boost your essential job skills

The better you are at what you do, the harder it might be for your employer to let you go. Make a list of the skills that are most essential to your specific role, and aim to improve in any areas where you could use work.

2. Improve your soft skills

If you're an IT professional, knowing a certain coding language may be essential to your job. And if you work in marketing, a strong knowledge of data analysis may be crucial. But there are certain skills that apply to any job, regardless of industry. These are known as soft skills, and they include things like time management, attention to detail, and communication. Boosting these skills could also help you avoid landing on the chopping block.

3. Learn a skill no one else on your team has

If you work on a team of seven where everyone has a similar job function and your manager is told they need to whittle your team down to four, it may be hard for your boss to make the case to keep you over another colleague -- especially if others have been with the company longer than you have. But if you learn a skill that no one else on your team has, that could be enough to buy you some staying power.

4. Build relationships throughout your company

If you work in the accounting department at your company, you may not have too many relationships outside of your number-crunching crew. But the more relationships you build within your company, the more opportunities for work you might have. And that way, if layoffs come down the pike, you may find that you're able to somehow pivot to another team if your manager is forced to make cuts.

The idea of losing a job can be very scary -- there's no question about it. And while these moves won't guarantee that you'll be spared in the event of layoffs, you may end up buying yourself some job security by making that effort.