US layoff notices by year, 1988–2026

Every US employer over a certain size must file a WARN Act notice before a mass layoff or plant closing, and every state publishes those notices its own way. This is all 45,775 of them we can reach, from 39 state portals, normalized into one schema and re-derived every day — counted by year. The rows for 2024 onward are free to download; the 36,332 notices before that are the archive.

45,775layoff notices on file1988–2026
36,332of them dated before 2024archive only — not in the free tier
5,042,671workers coveredas published by the states
39state portals in one schemarebuilt daily

Get the full 1988+ archive — $199 Download the free 2024+ dataset

Workers in WARN notices per year, 1988–2025341,319 workers19882025
Every complete year on file. 2020 is the peak: 1,386,338 workers across 11,508 notices. · Source: Official state labor department WARN listings, normalized · as of 2026-09-07
2020 is why people buy the archive. 11,508 WARN notices covering 1,386,338 workers were filed in 2020 alone — more workers than the 5 complete years since put together (2021–2025: 1,149,459). The free tier begins at 2024, so that year is visible here as a number and nowhere else on this site.
WARN notices filed per year, 1988–20253,482 notices19882025
Notice counts rise partly because coverage widens: early years are the few states that publish a deep archive, recent years are all 39. The states column below makes that explicit. · Source: Official state labor department WARN listings, normalized · as of 2026-09-07

Year by year

free tier   archive only. “States filing” is the number of distinct states with at least one notice that year — it is the coverage caveat, stated rather than hidden.

YearNoticesWorkersStates filingWhere it lives
2027 (future-dated)24401free tier
2026 (year to date)2,523235,28739free tier
20253,482341,31937free tier
20243,162260,18233free tier
Doing research, or building a model, on US layoffs? The archive is one payment for every notice back to 1988 (45,775 rows, 39 states, CSV + JSON, same schema as the free files), and it is rebuilt daily rather than frozen at the date you bought it. Full archive — $199 one-time → Only need the recent window? The free 2024+ dataset is complete and carries no delay.

FAQ

What is in the free dataset and what is in the archive?

The free CSV/JSON covers notices dated 2024-01-01 to today — complete, no delay, no login, CC BY 4.0. The archive is everything before that: 36,332 notices back to 1988, 4,205,443 workers, same schema, one payment.

Why is 2020 so much larger than every other year?

2020 is the COVID-19 shutdown. US employers filed 11,508 WARN notices covering 1,386,338 workers that year — roughly 7x the year before. It is the single most-requested slice of this dataset and it sits entirely in the archive, because the free tier starts at 2024.

Do early years mean fewer layoffs, or fewer states publishing?

Mostly the latter, and the table says so directly: the 'States filing' column shows how many distinct states appear in each year. Early years are the handful of agencies that publish a deep back catalogue. We never backfill or estimate a state that does not publish — a gap stays a gap.

Can I cite these yearly totals?

Yes. They are aggregates of public records, CC BY 4.0 — credit “WARN Feed” and link this page. The per-year numbers here are regenerated by the same daily pipeline that builds the dataset, so they match the files exactly. This build is dated 2026-09-07.

How current is the history?

The archive is re-derived on every daily refresh, not frozen at purchase: states amend headcounts and re-issue old notices, and those corrections flow through. What you buy is the current best reconstruction, not a snapshot someone uploaded once.