My husband and I are in the same boat (laid off from jobs in China) and decided to take a year off. We're young, we don't have kids, we have a decent savings, and since we were laid off quite late in the year, didn't see any attractive positions opening up. We're just chilling out with family in the States and using this time to work on hobbies, rewrite our curriculum so we can hit the ground running wherever we go next, and do a bit of personal and professional development. I definitely feel like we will be better equipped to get the "right" positions after a year off than we would have been if we had scrambled to take whatever we could find out of panic after being laid off.