The WARN Window Is Shrinking: Reported Layoff Plans Down 8% in Two Weeks

The national picture in the Layoff Atlas registry got smaller this week. The 90-day window now holds 667 WARN notices covering 61,284 reported workers, with 29 notices carrying no worker count. Two weeks ago, on October 29, the same window held 694 notices and 67,083 workers. That is 5,799 fewer reported workers, a drop of 8.6 percent, and 27 fewer notices.

The decline has been steady rather than sudden. On October 19 the window held 721 notices and 66,487 workers. It peaked at 67,083 workers on October 29, then eased to 64,774 on November 2, 64,044 on November 9, and 61,284 today. The average filing has shrunk too, from about 97 workers per notice in late October to about 92 now.

These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN notice describes what an employer planned at filing. Plans can shrink, move, or be cancelled before the effective date. But the direction of the window still tells us something, as long as we are careful about what that something is.

Why a rolling window shrinks

The registry's headline window covers only notices published in the last 90 days. Every day, the oldest notices drop out and new ones arrive. For the total to fall, the inflow has to be slower than the outflow. That is what is happening now: the notices filed in mid-August are aging out of the window faster than new November filings are replacing them.

That is not the same as saying layoffs are falling across the country. The window measures the flow of qualifying filings, not all job loss. Most layoffs never generate a WARN notice at all, because the employer is too small, the event is below the thresholds, or an exemption applies. A shrinking window means fewer large, covered layoffs are being reported right now than were reported in August and September. It does not mean nobody is losing a job.

There is a second reason to read the decline carefully. The window's composition has shifted. California now accounts for 22,043 of the 61,284 workers, or about 36 percent of the total, and Washington for 17,333, or about 28 percent. Together the two states hold 39,376 workers, 64 percent of everything in the window. The top five states — California, Washington, Virginia (2,556), Maryland (2,522), and Texas (2,419) — hold 46,873 workers, more than three-quarters of the total. When two states dominate this heavily, a slowdown in filings in either one moves the national number on its own.

What has not shrunk: the six weeks ahead

The pipeline of already-scheduled layoffs is still heavy. The registry lists 30,577 workers with effective dates in the next six weeks, almost exactly half of the entire 90-day window total. The week of November 13, this week, is the heaviest at 7,371 workers, followed by the week of November 20 at 7,181 and the week of November 27 at 5,991. December opens quietly — 1,997 workers in the week of December 4 and 3,034 in the week of December 11 — before rising again to 5,003 in the week of December 18.

That split is the useful contrast. The 90-day window looks backward at what was filed. The six-week calendar looks forward at what is scheduled. The backward-looking number is falling while the forward-looking one stays large, because a big share of the layoffs already on the books have not happened yet. They are still ahead, not behind.

Three cautions

First, 29 notices in the current window have unavailable worker counts, so the true total is higher than 61,284 by an unknown amount. The decline is real, but its exact size is not.

Second, coverage varies by state. The registry covers 51 jurisdictions, and 48 have imported records. States with stronger reporting and mini-WARN laws produce richer data. Missing coverage is not zero layoffs, and a state with few filings may simply have thinner reporting.

Third, the window will keep moving. If a wave of new filings arrives in the next two weeks, the total will rise again just as steadily as it fell. A two-week decline is a trend worth noting, not a verdict.

What to watch next

The number to watch is the inflow, not the total. If new notices keep arriving at the current pace, the window will keep shrinking into December as the late-summer filings age out. If filings pick up — for example, if the heavy November effective weeks are followed by fresh December notices — the window will turn back up. Either way, the six-week calendar is the better guide to what workers will actually experience next: more than 30,000 scheduled separations, concentrated in the next two weeks, before the December lull.

The registry will keep updating daily. The window's next move depends entirely on what employers file next.

Data source: Layoff Atlas. Figures are the 90-day WARN notice window as of November 12, 2026 (667 notices, 61,284 reported workers, 29 counts unavailable), with top states California 22,043, Washington 17,333, Virginia 2,556, Maryland 2,522, and Texas 2,419.