Data · WARN layoff notices
Layoff notices by county
Where employers have told the state they are laying off or closing, county by county and month by month. We add up the Employment Development Department's California reports and the Texas Workforce Commission's table, keep counts only, and check every total against the agencies' own summaries.
What is in this dataset?
How many mass-layoff and plant-closure notices employers filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, and how many employees they covered, for every county in the states whose workforce agencies publish the notices as files: California (July 2023 on, from the Employment Development Department's reports) and Texas (2019 on, from the Texas Workforce Commission's open-data table). Each county, state and county-not-given record carries the last 12 months, the last complete calendar year, the total since the file starts, and the month-by-month series. Only counts are kept: no employer name, address or contact. Notices are dated by the day the state agency received them. Other states are not included.
Use it to see where layoffs are being announced: counties with a run of large notices have workers who may need an employment lawyer (final pay, severance, WARN notice-period claims, unemployment appeals), and a county with none is not necessarily quiet, because the file covers only two states and only employers large enough to be covered. Look up a state to get every county in it, compare the two states, or search by county name.
- Records
- 315
- Look up by
- 2
- state
- Primary source
- 315
The letters are explained in what P, S, D and U mean.
Where does the data come from?
California's fiscal-year WARN report PDFs (July 2023 on) and current xlsx, and Texas's data.texas.gov WARN table, are read row by row and added up by county and by month of receipt; California rows must equal each PDF's own monthly summary (notices and employees) and the xlsx's 'Employees Affected', Texas rows must equal the API's count and yearly sums. No employer-level data is stored.
- Period covered
- January 2019 to October 2026
- Places
- States and counties
- How often we refresh it
- Every month
- Records read
- October 28, 2026
Official sources
- California Employment Development Department, by bulk download. California state agency report, published for public use. Only counts are republished; no employer is named..
- Texas Workforce Commission, by official API. Texas Open Data Portal table published by the Texas Workforce Commission for public use. Only counts are republished; no employer is named..
The sources the records cite most
- Texas Workforce Commission, WARN notices (data.texas.gov 8w53-c4f6): 255 records
- EDD WARN report warn_report1.xlsx: 60 records
- EDD WARN report warn-report-for-7-1-2023-to-06-30-2024.pdf: 60 records
- EDD WARN report warn-report-for-7-1-2024-to-06-30-2025.pdf: 60 records
- EDD WARN report warn-report-for-7-1-25-to-6-30-26.pdf: 60 records
What does a record look like?
-
Texas: 210 WARN layoff or closure notices covering 25,299 employees were received in the 12 months to 2026-06-23; 287 notices (26,606 employees) in 2025. Since 2019-01-04: 2,368 notices, 217,329 employees (one notice per work site; employees are the number the employer reported). Dated by the day the state agency received the notice.
Status P · checked October 28, 2026 · source: Texas Workforce Commission, WARN notices (data.texas.gov 8w53-c4f6)
-
California: 1,392 WARN layoff or closure notices covering 71,108 employees were received in the 12 months to 2026-10-26; 1,587 notices (94,555 employees) in 2025. Since 2023-07-03: 5,310 notices, 291,801 employees (one notice per work site; employees are the number the employer reported). Dated by the day the state agency received the notice.
Status P · checked October 28, 2026 · source: EDD, Layoff services: WARN reports
The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below.
What each of the 15 main columns means
jurisdiction- Two-letter state code (CA or TX)
level- county, county-not-given (blank or out-of-state sites) or state
county- 5-digit county FIPS code; empty for other levels
value- Notices received in the 12 months to the end of the file
warn_notices_12m- WARN notices received in the 12 months to coverage_to (one per work site)
warn_employees_12m- Employees those notices cover, as the employer reported
last_complete_year- The last complete calendar year in the file
warn_notices_last_year- Notices received in that year
warn_employees_last_year- Employees covered in that year
warn_notices_total- Notices received since coverage_from
warn_employees_total- Employees covered since coverage_from
coverage_from- Date of the first notice in the state's file
coverage_to- Date of the last notice in the state's file
years- Notices and employees by calendar year: [notices, employees]
months- Notices and employees by month of receipt: {YYYY-MM: [notices, employees]}
How do I use it in my own tools?
warn_lookup- For CA or TX: WARN notices and employees affected for the state and every county in it, last 12 months, last complete year, total and the month-by-month series.
warn_compare- WARN layoff notice records for California and Texas side by side (state and county rows).
warn_search- WARN records whose text matches the words given, such as a county name ("Harris County") or a 5-digit county FIPS code.
How to cite this dataset
You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.
- Version
- 1.0.0, released October 29, 2026
- Every version
- 10.5281/zenodo.23753096 (always points to the newest)
- License
- CC BY 4.0
Download the data
- CSV: warn-layoffs.csv 268 KB · one row per record (columns in README.txt)
- JSON: warn-layoffs.json 606 KB · every record with its sources
Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.
Suggested citation
Probative. (2026). WARN Act layoff and closure notices by county: California and Texas (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23753097
Credit line for a chart, table or article
Source: Probative, WARN Act layoff and closure notices by county: California and Texas, version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23753097, licensed CC BY 4.0.
Add to a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote)
Not legal advice. These are counts of notices employers filed with state agencies, kept for research and marketing planning. A notice is a plan, not a layoff that has happened, and says nothing about whether any worker has a legal claim; rights and deadlines are for your own counsel.
What changed recently?
- 2026-10-28 · WARN layoff and closure notices and employees affected by county and month for California (July 2023 on) and Texas (2019 on), counts only. (source)
The full log is in changes.json.
What are the limits?
- Only California and Texas are built (each record says from when), because only they publish notices as files we can read and check. Other states are not included, so a missing state is not a zero.
- A WARN notice is required only of employers with 100 or more employees, for plant closings and mass layoffs of a certain size, so most layoffs never appear. Small counties with no notice are not necessarily quiet.
- One row is one work site. A company closing five stores files five rows, so notice counts follow sites, not companies; employees are the number the employer reported and can change.
- Notices are dated by the day the state agency received them, which can be days after the employer's notice date. California's reports also list a few work sites outside the state; they count in the state total under 'county not given'.
- California's earlier fiscal-year reports are not read: the next one back has rows that do not match its own monthly summary and the older ones are scans or split across the page. The Texas agency updates its table irregularly, so Texas's latest notice can lag by months.
- A notice is a plan, not a layoff that has happened, and says nothing about whether any worker has a legal claim.
- Records older than 45 days since their last check are marked
stalein the files until we re-check them. Every confirmed error we fix is listed in the data corrections log.
Found a wrong value? Report an error with the record id and the source that shows the right value.
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