Comcast's 912-Worker Three-State WARN Cluster: Three Filings, Two Effective Dates

Looked at one by one, the three newest WARN records naming Comcast seem modest: 634 workers in Philadelphia, 159 across Washington state, and 119 in New Jersey. Added together, they total 912 workers across three states — one of the largest employer clusters in the current WARN data. And 793 of those 912 share a single effective date: December 31, 2026.

Each filing was covered individually when it surfaced. This article puts the three together, because the pattern across them is the story: a single employer name appearing in three state records within days of each other, with most of the affected jobs ending on the same day.

The three filings

The largest is the Comcast Technology Center record in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 634 workers, effective December 31, 2026. Its notice date is unavailable in the registry — it arrived as a recently imported record rather than a dated official filing — but its size alone makes it the biggest single Comcast record in the current data.

The second is a statewide Washington filing: 159 workers, also effective December 31, 2026, with a notice dated October 29, 2026 — a 63-day notice period. Unlike the Philadelphia record, which names a single site, the Washington record covers workers statewide.

The third is a New Jersey filing: 119 workers, effective January 27, 2027, also with no notice date in the registry. It is the only one of the three that lands in 2027, about a month after the other two.

Together: 634 + 159 + 119 = 912 workers. The two December 31 filings account for 793 of them, or about 87 percent of the cluster.

Why the shared effective date matters

December 31 is already a crowded date on the layoff calendar. Earlier WARN data showed a cluster of filings sharing that effective date, and the two Comcast filings add 793 workers to it. Year-end effective dates are common in WARN filings: they line up with fiscal year boundaries, budget cycles, and contract end dates. For affected workers, though, a December 31 effective date means a job ending on the last day of the year, with the job search and any benefits transition starting in January.

The New Jersey filing breaks the pattern slightly. Its January 27, 2027 effective date puts it in the next calendar year, and it is one of only a handful of 2027-dated records in the New Jersey archive, which counts 8 records and 697 workers for 2027 so far.

Three states, three different backdrops

The three filings sit in very different state contexts. Pennsylvania's archive holds 1,903 notices covering 257,171 workers, with 80 notices and 12,830 workers in 2026. Washington's archive holds 1,528 notices covering 249,913 workers, with 133 notices and 28,515 workers in 2026. New Jersey's archive holds 2,344 notices covering 376,139 workers, with 141 notices and 17,920 workers in 2026.

In all three states, the Comcast records are a small share of the historical totals — but they are among the largest fresh filings in the current window. The Philadelphia record in particular stands out: at 634 workers, it is larger than most single filings that appear in a given week.

What the cluster does not prove

A shared employer name across three state records does not by itself prove a single coordinated decision. WARN records are filed state by state, and company names in the registry are normalized groupings — separate records may reflect separate business units, sites, or decisions that happen to share a name and a season. The registry also notes that grouped company names do not establish ownership.

What the cluster does show is concentration: 912 reported workers tied to one employer name, in three states, within the same filing wave. That is worth tracking because it is exactly how a large national layoff event first becomes visible in WARN data — not as one announcement, but as separate state filings that add up.

The national picture

Layoff Atlas currently tracks 686 WARN notices covering 66,703 reported workers in its 90-day window, with 29 notices carrying no worker count. California (17,715 workers) and Washington (17,361) lead the state ranking, followed by Illinois (4,385), Texas (3,280), and Georgia (2,492). Scheduled effective weeks ahead include November 8 (5,311 workers), November 15 (7,830), November 22 (6,614), and November 29 (5,922).

All of these figures describe reported plans, not confirmed job losses. WARN filings are advance notifications; some plans change, and not every planned layoff happens exactly as filed. The Comcast cluster is no exception: 912 is the sum of what three records report, and the real outcome for those workers will depend on what happens between now and the effective dates.

Data source: Layoff Atlas