6.6 million employees laid off from 34,013 companies from 1988 to 2023

A: This database has been built using publicly-available information that employers are required to file with certain states when they perform large layoffs.

A: A WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice is a notice required by the federal WARN Act in the United States, which mandates that employers with 100 or more employees provide at least 60 days advance written notice of a plant closing or mass layoff affecting 50 or more employees. \ The notice is intended to provide affected employees with sufficient time to prepare for the loss of their jobs and to seek alternative employment. This is also why some of the layoff dates in our tracker are in the future. For more details, see our in-depth guide to the WARN Act here.

A: Some states have their own "mini-WARN" laws that provide additional protections or cover smaller employers not covered by the federal law. For example, California has a state law known as the California WARN Act, which covers employers with 75 or more employees and provides some additional protections, such as requiring notice to be given to employees who are terminated as well as the state. In New York, the state's Mini-WARN Act requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide 90 days' notice of a plant closing or mass layoff. So, the specifics of the WARN notice requirements can vary from state to state, but the general principle is that it is meant to provide affected employees with advanced warning of potential job losses.

A: No. Because not all states have a WARN act which requires full disclosure, this does not capture all layoffs performed by these companies.

A: We get our WARN data from a combination of: requesting records from state government agencies directly, news sources, and double checking with various layoff trackers

A: Please use this form if you have any questions, want to request data on a layoff, or have feature requests 🙂.

A: We are two long-time software engineers who wanted to help our friends understand the broader layoff environment.
Here are our LinkedIn profiles: Chris Talley and Steven Zhang

A: Steven Zhang heard about the WARN Act from a friend, and decided to share some data analysis of the Jan 2023 Google layoffs on Linkedin. The post went viral with over 600,000 Linkedin views. The next weekend, he and Chris Talley decided to build this site to help people understand the broader layoff environment.