Massachusetts Layoffs November 2026: WARN Numbers Explained

Massachusetts has filed 68 WARN notices covering 6,834 workers so far in 2026, according to the Layoff Atlas registry — close to last year's pace of 88 notices covering 7,860 workers over the full twelve months.

Nationally, the registry counts 694 notices covering 64,044 workers in the last 90 days, with 30 notices carrying no worker count. California leads the country at 21,514 workers, followed by Washington at 17,411, Illinois at 3,432, Texas at 2,750, and Maryland at 2,475. Massachusetts does not appear in the national top five, but its 2026 filings include one of the largest single health-care notices of the year anywhere in the country.

These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN notice is an advance filing with a state labor agency about a planned mass layoff or closure; some planned layoffs are reduced, delayed, or cancelled before the effective date. The numbers below describe what employers reported, not what ultimately happened.

The 2026 picture so far

Massachusetts' full imported archive holds 306 non-cancelled notices covering 29,896 workers. Of those, 14 notices carry no worker count, so the real total is somewhat higher. The archive mixes 67 direct government records with 225 attributed secondary records.

The year-by-year record:

  • 2026: 68 notices, 6,834 workers
  • 2025: 88 notices, 7,860 workers
  • 2024: 78 notices, 7,552 workers
  • 2023: 49 notices, 4,517 workers
  • 2022: 18 notices, 2,387 workers
  • 2021: 5 notices, 746 workers

The average 2026 filing covers about 100 workers, up from about 89 per filing in 2025. Massachusetts is seeing slightly fewer notices than last year but larger ones. With roughly seven weeks left in the year, 2026 is on track to finish near 2025's worker total even if the notice count stays lower.

Over the last 365 days, the archive contains 62 official filings covering 5,281 workers. The newest official notice is dated September 25, 2026, so the official feed has been quiet for about six weeks and recent filings are arriving through secondary reports.

The largest filings of 2026

A handful of employers account for a large share of the year's reported workers. The biggest filings so far:

  • Community Healthlink, Worcester area — 639 workers, effective October 9, 2026. The largest single Massachusetts filing of the year. The employer appears twice more in 2026 — 236 workers effective September 16 and 127 effective July 31 — for a combined 1,002 reported workers across three notices.
  • Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge — 229 workers, effective October 9, 2026. A biotech filing in the state's life-sciences hub.
  • Retail Therapy (Frugal Fannie's Fashion and Shoe Warehouse), Westwood — 214 workers, effective November 23, 2026. The largest filing still to take effect, and the one to watch in the coming weeks.

Smaller 2026 filings include The Coca-Cola Company in Northampton (175, effective August 15), SDH Education East in Waltham (173, August 11), National Express Transit in Attleboro (162, September 15), Christianbook Entities in Peabody (125, August 31), Postal Center International in Franklin (112, August 13), Jabil in Clinton (103, August 1), and TScan Therapeutics in Waltham (96, November 2).

Community Healthlink's three filings alone account for nearly 15 percent of all workers reported in Massachusetts this year.

What to watch next

Only two notices in the Massachusetts archive carry future effective dates, and the largest is the Retail Therapy filing of 214 workers effective November 23. That falls in the week of November 23, when 6,207 workers are scheduled nationwide — one of the heaviest weeks on the national calendar, alongside the weeks of November 9 (6,473), November 16 (6,202), and November 30 (5,916). The week of December 7 is the lightest of the six weeks ahead at 898 workers, while December 14 rebounds to 6,274.

Massachusetts has no separate state mini-WARN law, so the federal WARN Act applies: employers with 100 or more full-time workers generally must give 60 days' notice of a mass layoff or plant closure. That is the rule behind the notice dates above — most 2026 notices arrived roughly two months before their effective dates.

For workers named in a filing, the practical steps are the same regardless of employer: confirm the effective date and whether the notice covers your site, ask the employer in writing about severance and benefits continuation, and file for unemployment with the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance once the layoff takes effect. A WARN notice does not by itself determine benefit eligibility, and it does not guarantee the layoff will happen as filed.

How to read these numbers

Three caveats matter. First, the registry is not a census of layoffs: it covers only connected sources and imported date ranges, and smaller layoffs below the WARN threshold never appear. Second, 14 Massachusetts notices carry no worker count, so totals understate the real figure. Third, grouped company names match normalized employer names, and aliases preserve the exact employer names as reported — they do not by themselves establish ownership or a corporate relationship.

Even with those limits, the direction is clear: 2026 filings are running close to last year's pace, the average filing is bigger, and health care is driving the headline numbers. The November 23 effective date for Retail Therapy's 214 workers is the next test of whether that pattern holds.

Data source: Layoff Atlas