Ranking · WARN Act records

States with Most Workers Laid Off

See the recorded scale of WARN Act layoffs across states, with notice volume and event size available for context.

286,423
Largest state total
Texas
#1 state
1,433,550
Workers tracked

Texas has the most workers affected by recorded WARN Act layoffs

According to WARN Act filings submitted to state workforce agencies, Texas has 286,423 workers affected across 2,414 recorded notices, the most of any state. Across all 23 states with recorded filings, 1,433,550 workers were affected via 9,006 WARN notices.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, these are cumulative workers affected by WARN Act notices, totaled by state and ranked by the scale of job loss rather than population. Federal WARN generally requires covered employers to give 60 days’ notice before qualifying plant closings or mass layoffs; coverage depends on the employer, worksite, event size, workforce share, timing, and exceptions. States gather these filings through their rapid-response and dislocated-worker units, and stricter "mini-WARN" statutes in California, New York, and New Jersey can pull in smaller events too. Because totals sum every notice in our database, a single 8,000-worker closure can outrank a state with many small filings. Open any state for its full notice history and timeline.

The states with the largest recorded worker totals

Workers affected by WARN Act notices

workers

What this shows Large worker totals can come from many filings or a smaller number of exceptionally large events.

Source State WARN Act filings As of September 2026
Top-State Workers Affected
286,423
Texas
Total Workers Across All States
1,433,550
States with Activity
23
#StateWorkers Affected
1TexasTX286,423
2WashingtonWA237,737
3CaliforniaCA201,932
4IndianaIN151,425
5VirginiaVA124,054
6OregonOR65,152
7MarylandMD61,606
8IllinoisIL58,300
9WisconsinWI57,248
10New YorkNY48,400
11FloridaFL47,157
12ColoradoCO32,116
13GeorgiaGA17,000
14New JerseyNJ14,000
15MichiganMI9,000
16Rhode IslandRI6,100
17ArizonaAZ4,500
18MassachusettsMA3,400
19PennsylvaniaPA3,000
20MinnesotaMN2,500
21ArkansasAR2,000
22OhioOH400
23District of ColumbiaDC100

Methodology

Each state row sums the "workers affected" field across every WARN Act notice filed with that state's workforce agency. The PlainLayoffs ETL pipeline harmonizes filings from state-level WARN trackers and federal sources into a single notices table with per-state rollups. Coverage spans federal WARN-covered events plus state mini-WARN filings where reported.

Caveats

State-level totals reflect filing coverage in addition to actual layoff scale. States with broader mini-WARN laws can show higher totals at similar economic activity. Filing-only counts can miss layoffs outside federal or state notice rules, voluntary separations, and events that never become public filings. Treat these records as a view of published notices, not a complete measure of every job loss.

Source: WARN Act notices filed with state workforce agencies, aggregated by PlainLayoffs State totals refresh automatically with every ETL run. Filing-coverage variations between states limit strict cross-state comparison.

Every figure on PlainLayoffs is rendered directly from public WARN Act filings and state workforce agency records, no number is typed in by an editor. State totals are summed directly from WARN Act filings by workers affected. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2026. A WARN filing is a legally required notice, not a judgment of a company's management or financial health; rankings here reflect filed notice volume only.