US WARN Notices Cover 69,260 Workers in 90 Days: Which Weeks and States Are Hit Hardest?

Layoff Atlas, a tracker of state WARN filings, reported that it was tracking 750 notices covering 69,260 workers across the United States as of 8 October 2026, over a rolling 90-day window. The heaviest scheduled week is 28 October, with 8,220 workers. These are one aggregator's counts of reported plans, and the weekly figures are effective dates, not filing dates.

How many workers do US WARN notices cover right now?

Layoff Atlas counted 750 notices and 69,260 workers on 8 October 2026, using a rolling 90-day window of published notice dates. By 12 October 2026, its homepage showed 735 notices and 67,546 reported workers, with 31 notices whose headcounts were unavailable.

The four-day gap is a useful reminder of how these numbers behave. Notices age out of the 90-day window, new ones arrive, and filings can be withdrawn. Layoff Atlas says cancelled or withdrawn filings are excluded from headline totals, so a total can fall without any layoff being undone in the real world.

Which week is the heaviest for scheduled layoffs?

The week of 28 October is the largest, at 8,220 workers. Layoff Atlas lists six weeks of effective dates in its 8 October data, and the week of 11 November comes second.

Source: Layoff Atlas, as of 8 October 2026.

By our arithmetic, the 28 October week is about 11.9% of the 69,260 total. The week of 21 October is the lightest of the six, at 1,317.

Which states account for most of the workers?

Washington and California lead by a wide margin. In the 8 October data, Washington had 16,776 workers and California had 15,910. Layoff Atlas says the two states are roughly 47% of the total, and the arithmetic holds: 32,686 of 69,260 is 47.2%.

Sources: Layoff Atlas article, 8 October 2026; Layoff Atlas homepage, 12 October 2026.

The five states together come to 44,728 workers on 8 October, about 64.6% of the total. For a job seeker, the practical reading is geographic: if you work in Washington or California, a large share of the notices in this dataset are in your labour market. If you are elsewhere, the notices are spread across many smaller filings.

Which sectors are hit hardest?

The data does not say. Layoff Atlas's 8 October article gives no sector breakdown and names no employers, only effective weeks and states. Any claim that a particular industry accounts for most of the 69,260 workers would go beyond what this dataset shows.

What you can do is read the notices themselves. State labour agencies publish WARN filings with the employer name, location, headcount and effective date. Checking the filings for your own city or target employer is more reliable than relying on a national sector label, and it also tells you which roles and sites are affected.

What does a WARN notice legally require?

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires covered employers to give 60 calendar days of notice before plant closings and mass layoffs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department says the law generally covers employers with 100 or more employees.

The same Department of Labor guide, which is marked as updated in February 2018, sets out the main triggers:

• Plant closing: a permanent or temporary closure of a single site of employment that results in an employment loss.
• Mass layoff: 50 to 499 employees affected during any 30-day period at a single site, and at least 33 percent of the site's workforce. If 500 or more workers are affected, the 33 percent rule does not apply.
• Who gets notice: affected employees or their representatives, the state dislocated worker unit, and the chief elected official of the local government.
• Shorter notice: allowed for a faltering company, unforeseeable business circumstances or a natural disaster.
• Exclusions: regular federal, state and local government entities that provide public services are not covered.

This is why the 60-day lead matters for the schedule above. A notice filed in the window generally points to separations roughly two months later, which is how an aggregator can show layoffs scheduled for late October and mid-November.

How does this compare with national layoff data?

Not directly, and it should not be compared that way. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that layoffs and discharges were 1.6 million in August 2026, a rate of 1.0 percent, and described the change as little. The BLS also revised July up by 36,000 to 1.7 million. The figures are preliminary.

The BLS number is a monthly national estimate of all layoffs and discharges from a survey of employers. The Layoff Atlas figure is a count of workers named in advance notices over 90 days, and only for employers large enough to file. Layoff Atlas itself says its totals should not be treated as a complete national jobs statistic. The two numbers measure different things, so neither confirms nor contradicts the other.

What should affected workers do now?

If you work at a site named in a WARN notice, start with the dates, because the effective date is when employment ends and the 60-day notice period runs before it. Practical steps:

1. Read your notice. Check the effective date, whether the loss is permanent or temporary, and any contact listed for the state dislocated worker unit.
2. Contact the state dislocated worker unit. The Department of Labor lists it as one of the parties that must receive notice, so it is the natural first call about reemployment services.
3. Ask your employer in writing about final pay, benefits and any severance terms.
4. Start your search inside the notice period. Sixty days is a head start, not a guarantee, and some exceptions allow less.
5. Check the employer's own careers page for open roles. Apply through the employer's posting rather than a reposted listing.

What's still unclear?

Several things limit how far these numbers can be pushed.

• One aggregator. Every figure here comes from Layoff Atlas. The article's only linked data source is the Layoff Atlas site itself, and the 8 October article links to no individual state filings.
• Incomplete coverage. Only 48 of 51 jurisdictions have imported records, and the homepage notes that WARN coverage is not a census of layoffs. Missing coverage is not zero layoffs.
• Excluded headcounts. Totals leave out notices with unavailable headcounts, which Layoff Atlas says means true figures are likely higher.
• Plans, not outcomes. A worker count is the number reported in a notice, not a verified number of completed job losses.
• Effective dates versus filing dates. The window is based on published notice dates, while the weekly table is by effective date. The article does not explain how the two are reconciled. The six weeks listed add up to 26,049 workers, about 37.6% of the 69,260 total, and the article does not say where the rest are scheduled.
• An internal inconsistency. The article calls 28 October "more than double any other week in the window," but its own table puts 8,220 against 6,124 for the week of 11 November, a ratio of about 1.34. The heaviest-week finding stands. The "more than double" wording does not match the table.
• Small employers are invisible. Smaller layoffs and employers below the federal threshold will not appear, and state rules vary.

The takeaway is narrow. In one aggregator's data, scheduled layoffs bunch up in late October and mid-November, and two states hold nearly half of the covered workers. Beyond that, the dataset cannot tell you which sectors are shrinking.