Hawaii Layoffs 2026: WARN Numbers Explained

Hawaii's WARN record tells two stories at once. Layoff Atlas holds 503 non-cancelled imported notices for the state, reporting 720 workers affected, with 6 notices carrying future effective dates. The second story is quieter but more important: 497 of those 503 notices have no worker count at all. Nearly the entire official archive reads as notices with missing numbers — which means Hawaii's 2026 total comes from just six filings, all but one of them secondary reports.

The headline numbers

In the rolling 90-day window Layoff Atlas tracks nationally (currently 735 notices covering 67,546 reported workers), Hawaii shows 14 notices and 720 reported workers. The state's full imported archive is much larger — 503 non-cancelled notices — but the worker total doesn't grow with it, because the counts were never supplied.

The last 365 days make the pattern stark: Hawaii's archive contains 32 eligible official filings reporting just 4 affected workers, with 31 of the counts unavailable. The newest official notice is dated October 5, 2026. On the archive's year-by-year view, 2026 shows 32 notices and 720 workers — but 2025 (40 notices), 2024 (30 notices), 2023 (26 notices), and every year back through 2019 all show zero workers. Those zeros are not evidence of zero layoffs. They are evidence of filings that never carried a headcount.

451 of Hawaii's archive records are direct government filings from the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, with 52 attributed secondary reports. The state's source connection is rated partial, last checked on October 12, 2026.

The six filings that carry the whole total

Every one of Hawaii's 720 counted workers in 2026 comes from these filings:

• First Insurance Company of Hawaii, Honolulu — 212 workers, effective October 1, 2026 (secondary report)
• The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society (Pohai Nani), Kaneohe — 185 workers, effective October 31, 2026 (secondary report)
• Aliʻi Health Center, Kailua Kona — 140 workers, effective October 1, 2026 (secondary report)
• Festival Fun Parks — 117 workers, effective October 18, 2026 (secondary report)
• Amentum, Schofield Barracks — 62 workers, effective October 31, 2026 (secondary report)
• Laie Water Company — 4 workers, closure, notice filed September 25, 2026 (official filing)

Those six add up to exactly 720. Note the mismatch: the Atlas also holds official Hawaii filings for First Insurance, Aliʻi Health Center, and Good Samaritan Society naming the same October 1 and October 31 effective dates — but the official versions carry "Unavailable" for worker counts. The numbers entered the record through secondary reports, not the state's own documents.

The newest filings, and one unusual cause

The freshest official filing is Dole Food Company Hawaii, a closure noticed on October 5, 2026 with an effective date of November 30 — worker count unavailable. Alongside it sit closures at Watabe Wedding Corporation, Bayer Research and Development Services, Adventist Health, Hawaii Coffee Company, and several retail and services employers, all with unavailable counts.

One filing stands out for its cause: The Beach House Kauaʻi notified the state on September 10, 2026 that Hurricane Lowell had caused significant damage to the property, forcing a temporary pause of all services and events until repairs are complete. WARN filings usually describe business decisions; natural-disaster-driven pauses are the rarer, legitimate exception to the usual notice timeline.

What's missing from the record

Hawaii is the clearest example in the Atlas of how missing counts warp the picture. When 2025's 40 notices all show zero workers, the state effectively disappears from national worker-total rankings even while real layoffs occurred. Missing source coverage is not zero layoffs — and in Hawaii's case, missing worker counts are not zero affected workers. Any reading of the state's numbers has to carry that uncertainty.

National context

Nationally, the 90-day window shows Washington (16,776 reported workers) and California (15,853) far ahead, followed by Illinois (4,772), Texas (3,842), and Ohio (3,224). The forward calendar is heaviest in late October and mid-November — 5,754 workers for the week of October 26, 5,061 for November 2, 6,517 for November 9, and 6,008 for November 16. Hawaii barely registers on that calendar, not because nothing is scheduled but because its filings rarely carry the date and count data the calendar is built from.

What Hawaii workers should take from a filing

Federal WARN generally requires employers with 100 or more employees to give 60 days' notice before a qualifying plant closing or mass layoff. If your employer files, the notice date starts your window: confirm unemployment insurance eligibility through the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, review health-coverage continuation options, and start a job search while still employed. If no filing names your employer, that is reassuring but not a guarantee — layoffs below the federal thresholds generate no notice at all, and in a state with many smaller employers, that blind spot is proportionally larger.

The bottom line

Hawaii's 2026 WARN picture is 32 notices and 720 reported workers — but the honest headline is that the state filed 32 notices and reported headcounts for six. Until Hawaii's official filings carry worker counts with any regularity, the numbers will describe the shape of the reporting system more than the scale of the layoffs. Read every figure here as reported plans, not confirmed job losses — and read Hawaii's zeros as what they are: data that was never supplied.

Data source: Layoff Atlas