One Layoff Away: Why Financially Secure Families Still Feel Vulnerable

For Zach, affordability is not only about what things cost. It is about whether a family can count on being secure next month.

Zach has a good job. He saves carefully. He considers his family financially secure.

And yet, since becoming a father, he has found himself thinking constantly about what could happen if one corporate decision suddenly changed everything.

“All the time, I’m trying to make sure that I have enough saved away,” Zach said. “If something were to happen, I have a cushion to be able to go an extended period of time.”

The anxiety is not hypothetical. Zach has watched large employers eliminate thousands of positions, move jobs elsewhere, and later begin hiring again. For employees, each new round of layoffs means more people competing for fewer openings—and more uncertainty about how long it could take to find another job.

“Everything is tighter now, even for somebody who I would consider financially secure.”

For Zach, losing a job would not mean only losing a paycheck. It could also mean losing his family’s health insurance at precisely the moment they could least afford another major expense.

“You never know if next month they deliver the news that you’re no longer employed and you don’t have health insurance,” he said. “Everybody knows how expensive health insurance is.”

That possibility changes how a family thinks about every dollar. Savings are no longer simply for a vacation, home improvement, or long-term goal. They become protection against a system in which years of hard work can be disrupted without warning.

Zach remembers hearing about companies where loyalty was rewarded. Employees could build careers, count on pensions, and believe their employer had a long-term investment in their well-being.

That relationship feels increasingly unfamiliar.

“We’re all just numbers on a spreadsheet, and I don’t like that.”

Zach is not asking for guarantees that nothing difficult will ever happen. He understands that companies change, industries evolve, and no job can be completely permanent.

But he believes families who work, save, and plan responsibly should be able to build a stable life without feeling as though one decision made in a distant corporate office could send everything into free fall.

That is part of why Zach supports Dan Kessler for the Minnesota Senate.

Dan has spent his career listening to people navigating stress, uncertainty, health challenges, and family pressure. Zach believes that experience gives Dan a different understanding of affordability—one that goes beyond statistics and recognizes what instability does to people’s lives.

Affordability is not only the price on a grocery shelf or the number printed on a monthly bill.

It is whether parents can plan for the future.

It is whether losing a job also means losing access to health care.

It is whether years of responsible decisions can provide genuine security.

And it is whether the people representing Carver County understand that even families who appear to be doing well are carrying a growing amount of uncertainty.

Zach believes Dan does.

“If you want somebody who you know is going to listen,” he said, “why not put somebody whose job it is to listen in office?”