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STACEY VANEK-SMITH: Don’t know about your office, but things are pretty quiet around Marketplace this week. And some businesses shut down completely between Christmas and New Year’s. Yahoo! is doing that this year. The Web site won’t shut down, but the media giant’s telling most of its workers to stay home next week.

Marketplace’s Amy Scott reports.

AMY SCOTT: Several Silicon Valley companies shut down this time of year. But tech analyst Rob Enderle says they tend to be manufacturers or software companies. He says they can afford to take time off when their customers do.

ROB ENDERLE: But Yahoo isn’t that kind of a company. Yahoo is an ongoing media company, and that means they pretty much have to be up and running.

Especially, he says, with only a few weeks to go before the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

But this isn’t a normal year. Yahoo has been struggling to cut costs. It laid off about 700 workers earlier this year.

Peter Capelli teaches management at the Wharton School. He says more companies are turning to furloughs these days to avoid further layoffs.

PETER CAPELLI: The interesting thing about this is they may end up saving more money than if they laid people off.

Capelli says that’s because they’ll avoid severance and legal costs and the expense of rehiring and retraining if and when business improves.

Still, employees might not be overjoyed at the prospect of a long vacation. For days that aren’t official holidays, they’ll have to either burn vacation time or take unpaid leave.

I’m Amy Scott for Marketplace.