Colorado Layoffs 2026: WARN Numbers Explained

How many layoffs has Colorado seen in 2026? The WARN notices collected in the Layoff Atlas archive give a concrete answer: 41 notices filed so far this year, reporting 5,060 affected workers. But Colorado's number comes with an asterisk you should know before quoting it. Here's what the data shows — and what it doesn't.

Colorado's 2026 numbers so far

In the Layoff Atlas imported archive, Colorado shows 41 non-cancelled WARN notices for 2026 covering 5,060 reported workers. Four notices in the archive carry future effective dates, meaning some of this year's reported layoffs are still scheduled to take place — including a Mission Foods closure in Pueblo (90 workers, effective October 13, 2026) and a Battelle filing (15 workers, effective November 9, 2026).

How does 2026 compare to recent years?

• 2026 (so far): 41 notices · 5,060 workers
• 2025 (full year): 69 notices · 5,877 workers
• 2024 (full year): 67 notices · 5,362 workers
• 2023 (full year): 89 notices · 5,762 workers
• 2022 (full year): 30 notices · 3,221 workers

With nearly three months of the year left, 2026 is on pace to finish close to 2024 and 2025 — an ordinary year by Colorado standards, with no single mega-filing driving the total. The average 2026 notice covers roughly 120 workers.

The long view: 2020 still dominates

The archive reaches back to 2015, and no year comes close to 2020, when the pandemic produced 279 Colorado notices reporting 33,252 workers. The next-highest totals — 2015 (6,796 workers), 2019 (6,042), and 2025 (5,877) — are each a fraction of that spike. Against that history, 2026 looks unremarkable.

The biggest 2026 filings

The year's largest reported events cluster along the Front Range, in Denver and the Pikes Peak (Colorado Springs) area:

• Tlingit Haida — 295 workers, Pikes Peak/El Paso, effective September 28, 2026
• Accel — 246 workers, Pikes Peak, effective June 30, 2026
• NR ParentCO — 141 workers, Denver, closure, effective October 2, 2026
• TIAA – Update — 110 workers, Denver, layoff, effective July 1, 2026
• Public Storage — 107 workers, Arapahoe/Douglas, layoff, effective July 22, 2026
• Aurora Mental Health & Recovery — 91 workers, Arapahoe, layoff, effective June 30, 2026

Closures are a visible theme. Mission Foods and Montrose Forest Products each reported 90-worker closures, alongside smaller shutdowns like 80 Acres Urban Agriculture (60 workers, Denver/Adams) and The Cannabist (50 workers, Denver). The cannabis sector shows up twice in the 2026 closure list — NR ParentCO (141 workers) and The Cannabist — both in Denver.

A repeat-filer pattern is worth noting: Battelle, the defense and research contractor, appears five times among recent Pueblo filings with counts ranging from 1 to 18 workers. That's a useful reminder that headline totals are built from many small events, and that one company can file multiple notices across a year.

The asterisk: read Colorado's numbers with care

Here is the caveat that matters for Colorado specifically. The state is listed as partial coverage in the Layoff Atlas source registry: over the last 365 days, the archive contains zero eligible official filings from Colorado, and the newest official notice is dated May 29, 2025. The archive holds just 2 direct government records against 840 attributed secondary reports — the licensed WARN Feed that supplements inaccessible government sources. Those secondary reports are attributed, but they are not independently verified as official filings.

In plain terms: Colorado's 2026 total of 5,060 reported workers is a floor, not a census. Official state filings may exist that the archive cannot yet see, and 47 notices in the archive carry no worker count at all — they contribute nothing to the totals. Treat the numbers as a reliable signal of direction, not a complete count.

Where Colorado sits nationally

Nationally, the Layoff Atlas 90-day window currently tracks 738 notices reporting 68,093 workers. Colorado does not appear in the top five states by reported workers — Washington (16,776), California (16,011), Illinois (4,772), Texas (3,842), and Ohio (3,224) lead that ranking. The heaviest upcoming effective weeks nationally land on October 31 (7,437 workers) and November 14 (8,216 workers); Colorado's notices with future effective dates will land somewhere in that national schedule.

How to read these numbers

A few cautions apply to every WARN figure, Colorado included:

• These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A notice describes an employer's intended layoff or closure. Dates and worker counts can change, and a filing does not establish that the reported job losses actually occurred.
• WARN is not a census of layoffs. Federal and state thresholds exclude small employers and small layoffs, and coverage gaps — like Colorado's missing official feed — mean some filings never enter the archive.
• Counts describe events, not unique people. The same worker can appear in more than one notice, so historical sums should not be read as headcounts of distinct individuals.

Colorado's 2026 layoff picture, as far as the available data can show it: roughly five thousand reported workers across forty-odd filings, led by a handful of large events in the Denver and Colorado Springs areas, with the official record trailing the reality by more than a year. If the state's official feed reconnects, these numbers will get sharper.

Data source: Layoff Atlas (https://layoffatlas.com).