MPL Intermediate Files 60-Worker WARN Notice in Fairland, Indiana, Effective Dec. 28

MPL Intermediate has filed a WARN notice covering 60 workers in Fairland, Indiana, according to Layoff Atlas data. The notice is dated Oct. 28, 2026, and the layoff is scheduled to take effect Dec. 28, 2026.

It is the newest dated filing on the national registry — the first entry in the latest update of Layoff Atlas's 90-day notice window — and it is the filing this article examines in detail. These figures are reported plans, not confirmed job losses: a WARN notice records what an employer has told the state it plans to do, and the final number of workers affected can change.

What the filing shows

The facts in the record are straightforward:

• Employer: MPL Intermediate
• Location: Fairland, Indiana
• Workers reported: 60
• Notice date: Oct. 28, 2026
• Effective date: Dec. 28, 2026

The gap between the notice date and the effective date is 61 days — just over the 60 days of advance notice that the federal WARN Act generally requires. That timing matters. The WARN Act's core requirement is not that employers avoid layoffs, but that they give workers and communities time to prepare: in general, employers with 100 or more full-time workers must give at least 60 days' written notice before a plant closing or a mass layoff that meets the law's thresholds.

A 61-day window clears that federal floor by a single day. The record does not specify whether the action is a closure, a layoff, or a combination, nor does it break the 60 workers down by job title or department. Treat the headline number as the total reported in the notice, not as a detailed roster.

Indiana in context

Indiana's WARN archive puts this filing in a relatively quiet year for the state. In 2026 so far, Indiana has 29 notices covering 4,268 reported workers, according to Layoff Atlas's state page. Over the last 365 days, the state's imported archive contains 36 eligible official filings reporting 5,488 workers, and the newest official notice date in that archive is Oct. 28, 2026 — the same date as the MPL Intermediate filing.

For comparison, Indiana recorded 34 notices and 4,643 workers in 2025, and 38 notices and 3,175 workers in 2024. The state's full imported archive is much larger — 1,181 non-cancelled notices reporting 150,790 workers — but most of that history comes from earlier years, including the pandemic-era spike of 160 notices and 33,490 workers in 2020. Six Indiana notices currently carry future effective dates, and the MPL filing is one of the latest-dated among them, with its Dec. 28 effective date falling just after Christmas.

A single 60-worker filing will not move the state ranking, but for Fairland, a small Shelby County town southeast of Indianapolis, 60 jobs is locally significant.

The national picture

Nationally, Layoff Atlas currently counts 694 notices covering 67,083 reported workers in its 90-day window, with 30 worker counts unavailable. Those unavailable counts are excluded from the totals, so the true number of affected workers in the window is slightly higher than the published figure.

The top states by reported workers in the current window are California (18,309), Washington (17,050), Illinois (4,626), Texas (3,652), and Georgia (2,492). California and Washington together account for more than half of all reported workers in the window, which reflects a small number of very large filings in those states rather than a broad national surge.

The MPL filing also sits outside the current six-week upcoming-events outlook, which runs through the week of Dec. 3. Its Dec. 28 effective date lands in the final week of the year, a period when relatively few filings have effective dates so far.

What to watch

Three things are worth tracking as Dec. 28 approaches. First, whether the filing is amended — employers sometimes revise worker counts or dates, and Layoff Atlas updates its records as new notices arrive. Second, whether additional Indiana filings appear with nearby effective dates, which would indicate a broader end-of-year pattern in the state rather than an isolated filing. Third, whether the affected workers receive the rapid-response services that state labor agencies typically offer after a WARN filing, including job-search assistance and retraining information.

For workers named in a WARN notice, the practical steps are the same regardless of the employer's size: confirm the details with the employer, check eligibility for unemployment benefits, review health coverage options, and contact the state's rapid-response team. The notice itself does not guarantee severance pay — the WARN Act is a notice law, not a payment law — so any severance depends on the employer's policy or a separate agreement.

The MPL Intermediate filing is, on its own, a modest entry in the national data: 60 workers, one town, one date. Its significance is mostly in its timing. It is the freshest filing in the registry, it clears the 60-day notice standard by a day, and it extends the layoff calendar into the last week of 2026 — a reminder that the WARN data keeps moving even as the year winds down, one filing at a time.

Data source: Layoff Atlas