Frequently Asked Questions

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires employers with 100 or more employees to give 60 calendar days' advance written notice before a plant closing or mass layoff affecting 50 or more workers. The goal is to give workers and their families time to adjust and seek new employment or retraining.

There are several reasons a layoff may not appear. Employers with fewer than 100 employees are exempt from federal WARN requirements. Layoffs of fewer than 50 workers at a single site do not trigger WARN. Some employers who are required to file do not do so. Additionally, our database reflects publicly available state filings, some states lag weeks or months in publishing notices.

Coverage is deepest for the states that publish structured, regularly-updated WARN registries, California, Texas, Washington and Oregon, which account for most of the filings on record. Additional states appear where major layoff events are publicly documented. Some state agencies publish little or no machine-readable WARN data, so the database reflects the states with filings on record rather than a complete national census. California uses its own broader WARN law with a lower 75-employee threshold.

We update our database regularly as state agencies publish new notices. The lag between when a notice is filed and when it appears in our database depends on each state's publication schedule, typically 2–8 weeks. We do not receive filings in real-time directly from state agencies.

We tag layoffs where the employer's public filing, official statement, or contemporaneous news coverage explicitly cites automation, artificial intelligence, or technology displacement as a contributing reason for the workforce reduction. We do not speculate or infer AI causation, the tag requires explicit attribution from a primary source.

We do not provide bulk data downloads. Our data is derived from public state agency records, and users should obtain raw data directly from the relevant state workforce agency for research or compliance purposes. Links to primary sources are provided where available.

Use our contact page to report data errors. Please include the company name, state, and notice date so we can locate the specific record. Note that worker counts and company names come directly from the original WARN notice, if the error originates in the state filing, we will note it but cannot change the underlying government record.