Alaska's layoff record for 2026 is the quietest kind of story a WARN tracker can tell. The state has a single official filing this year, covering 160 workers, and not one filing with a future effective date. That means no Alaska layoffs are scheduled in any of the upcoming weeks the registry tracks — while the rest of the country heads into its heaviest stretch of the year.
Quiet numbers still deserve a careful read: a blank calendar can mean a calm labour market, a coverage gap, or simply that Alaska's small number of large employers file rarely.
The headline numbers
Alaska has 66 non-cancelled imported WARN notices in the full archive, reporting 9,308 workers affected. In 2026 so far, that archive holds just one notice, reporting 160 workers. The last 365 days tell the same story: one eligible official filing, 160 workers, with the newest official notice dated July 6, 2026.
Four of the 66 notices have unavailable worker counts, so the 9,308 total is a floor rather than a complete count. All 66 records are direct government records — none are attributed secondary reports — which makes Alaska one of the cleaner-sourced state pages in the registry. And there are zero notices with future effective dates, so nothing is queued up.
The year-by-year picture
Alaska's archive is dominated by a single year. In 2020, the state recorded 21 notices covering 3,673 workers — roughly 39% of all the workers in the entire archive, in one year. The next-largest year was 2018, with 7 notices and 1,028 workers.
Since then, the filing rate has fallen sharply:
- 2021: 4 notices, 418 workers
- 2022: 1 notice, 182 workers
- 2023: 4 notices, 128 workers
- 2024: 1 notice, no workers reported
- 2025: 2 notices, 182 workers
- 2026: 1 notice, 160 workers
The pattern is consistent: Alaska goes years at a time with one or two filings. That is partly the shape of the state's economy — a small number of large employers in oil, fishing, tourism, and government — and partly the WARN Act's own thresholds. Federal WARN only covers employers with 100 or more full-time workers, and only when 50 or more workers are affected (or a plant closes). Smaller layoffs, and layoffs at smaller employers, never produce a filing at all.
The 2024 entry is worth a note: its single notice reported no workers. That does not mean nobody was affected — it means the record carried no usable count, one of the ways WARN totals undercount real layoffs.
Nothing scheduled ahead
The most useful number for Alaskans watching the calendar is zero: zero notices with future effective dates. Nationally, the registry's upcoming weeks are heavy. The week of November 10 carries 5,477 reported workers, November 17 carries 6,613, and the week of November 24 — the heaviest on the calendar — carries 9,300. December 1 follows with 2,593, December 8 with 1,337, and December 15 with 5,628.
That is good news for now, but a single large filing — the kind Alaska sees every year or two — would change the picture overnight.
Alaska in the national picture
Nationally, the registry's 90-day window currently holds 665 notices covering 63,159 reported workers, with 30 counts unavailable, updated November 9. The totals are heavily concentrated: California leads with 20,982 reported workers and Washington follows with 17,411. Illinois (3,432), Maryland (2,475), and Virginia (2,473) round out the top five.
Alaska's 160 workers in 2026 sit at the opposite end of that scale — about a quarter of one percent of the national 90-day worker total. The windows differ — Alaska's figure covers the calendar year, the national figure a rolling 90 days — but the scale gap is real either way. Alaska is a small, filing-light state in a dataset dominated by two big ones.
The registry covers 51 jurisdictions, and 48 have imported records. Alaska's page is fully sourced from official records, which is more than can be said for states whose archives lean on secondary reports.
How to read Alaska's numbers
Three caveats matter before drawing conclusions.
First, these are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN notice is an employer's advance statement that layoffs or a closure are planned. Plans change, dates shift, and some notices are amended or cancelled.
Second, the registry only sees what connected sources publish. Alaska's record is entirely official filings, which is a strength — but if a filing never reaches the state's published feed, it never reaches this count either. Missing coverage is not the same as zero layoffs.
Third, the 2026 figure is a year-to-date count, not a full-year total. Alaska's one filing arrived in July. A second filing before December would double the year's notice count and could add hundreds of workers, depending on its size.
For workers: nothing is scheduled, the last filing was in July, and the filing pace has been slow for five straight years. Anyone whose employer is planning a large layoff or closure should still check the state's published notices directly — the absence of a filing is not a guarantee.
Data source: Layoff Atlas.
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