The context behind the numbers
Methodology
Layoff Atlas indexes public WARN notices from official state labor agencies. Each figure describes a reported plan, with the original source linked at the filing level.
What the atlas measures
The 30, 90 and 365-day selectors filter by the supplied notice or received date. “Latest notices” includes direct government records with an actual official notice or received date only. Historical imports never become fresh filings. Undated records appear under Recently imported; licensed secondary reports are excluded from Latest notices. Upcoming lists and the weekly chart include only future published effective dates. A worker count is the number reported in a notice, not a verified number of completed job losses. Historical sums count events, not unique people; the same worker may be included in more than one notice.
Layoffs, closures, temporary events and unspecified event types are kept distinct. Cancelled or withdrawn filings remain available at their filing URLs but are excluded from current search results, upcoming events and headline totals. A missing worker count, date, address, county or ZIP is labeled unavailable. Unknown counts do not contribute to worker totals.
Normalization and deduplication
The exact employer value and raw source row are retained. Company profiles normalize punctuation and common legal suffixes and show employer-name aliases; grouping is name-based and does not establish ownership. Addresses are normalized for display while the original source row remains available.
Notice IDs use an official state-source identifier when published or a stable combination of employer, location and notice date. Repeated imports update the same record. Published revisions are retained in the database; Wisconsin worker-count changes and partial rescissions are applied to the original event rather than added as new layoffs. Cross-state facilities remain separate notices.
Geography and the map
Counties explicitly reported by a source are matched to Census county FIPS codes. Locations that span multiple counties or lack a confirmed county appear in state totals only. ZIP codes are displayed only when published in a source address. City names are extracted from source text where the formatting makes them unambiguous. We do not assign a county or ZIP from a company headquarters.
Map boundaries are US Census-derived us-atlas geography. Hatched locations lack connected source coverage. A pale county within a connected state means no county-matched notices in the selected result set; it is not evidence that no layoffs took place.
Freshness and provenance
The ingestion worker checks each configured official source daily from 12:17 through 22:17 UTC; Sunday runs request a full refresh. Requests retry with backoff and an 18-second timeout. Each source runs in isolation and retains its prior records if a check fails. Last success, failed checks and unpublished sources are shown on Data Sources.
Original source files are retained privately in R2; D1 stores SHA-256 hashes, source URLs, fetch timestamps and exact raw filing rows. Snapshot hashes identify the exact content read. Local and production imports use the same adapters. A successful sync means the source was checked and parsed; the agency may publish less frequently.
Limits of coverage
Licensed secondary WARN Feed records may supplement inaccessible government sources. They are labeled secondary, attributed under CC BY 4.0, and are not independently verified official filings. Imputed month-only days are withheld; duplicate/conflicting amendments are held for review. A stale provider snapshot is displayed as stale even when polling succeeds.
The source registry covers 50 states and the District of Columbia. Some agencies publish filing-level datasets; others publish only guidance, do not expose a public filing list, or use pages that may fail automated checks. The live Data Sources page shows current feed health and each agency’s earliest and latest imported notice dates. Historical depth varies by state.
WARN does not cover every employer, job loss or small layoff. State and federal thresholds, exemptions, late notices, revisions, temporary layoffs and incomplete source fields limit comparisons. Totals should not be treated as a complete national jobs statistic.
Common questions
Are WARN notices confirmed job losses?
No. A WARN notice reports an employer’s planned layoff or closure. Dates and worker counts can change, and a notice does not establish that the reported job losses occurred.
Does Layoff Atlas cover every US layoff?
No. It indexes government sources and separately attributed licensed secondary reports listed on Data Sources. WARN does not cover every employer or small layoff. A location without a connected source is marked unavailable, rather than counted as zero.
What is the difference between notice date and effective date?
Notice date is the published filing or received day. Effective date is the first published day of the planned event. Some states publish only an effective date; the notice date remains unavailable.
How often is the data checked?
Official sources are checked daily between 12:17 and 22:17 UTC. Historical archives receive a full refresh each Sunday. Each source displays its last successful check and any failure.
Where can I verify a filing?
Open a filing page and follow its supplied source link. Secondary reports clearly identify their provider and are not independently verified. The page also shows the raw source record, ingestion time and source snapshot hash.