I can't say anything about "normal", but my own personal anecdata are that laid off employees are normally offered some kind of assistance. Only a couple times

I can't say anything about "normal", but my own personal anecdata are that laid off employees are normally offered some kind of assistance. Only a couple times in 30 years has it been me personally, and in both cases I was offered help (that actually resulted in me getting another job within that organization, actually). In many other cases, some kind of networking assistance is given. When AMD was closing fabs in the SV area in the early 90's, they gave blue-collar employees 6 months of retraining, since they were unlikely to find other fab jobs in that area. So it does happen, even in the U.S.