Safeway has filed a WARN notice covering 92 workers at its Richmond, California location, with the closure effective December 20, 2026. The notice, dated October 20, 2026, appears in California's official WARN records via the state Employment Development Department (EDD), as tracked by Layoff Atlas. It is the largest recent California filing with a future effective date not yet covered in this series, once the already-spotlighted Dreyer's filings and already-effective filings are set aside.
The filing is a closure, not a partial layoff: the Richmond site is shutting down, and all 92 affected workers are tied to that single event. The notice-to-effective gap is 61 days, one day beyond the federal WARN Act's 60-day minimum on timing alone. That arithmetic says nothing by itself about whether every other requirement of the law was met — notice content, recipients, and the details of the closure all matter — but the timing clears the federal floor.
What the filing says
The key facts from the official record are straightforward:
- Employer: Safeway
- Location: Richmond, California
- Workers affected: 92
- Event type: Closure
- Notice date: October 20, 2026
- Effective date: December 20, 2026
- Source: California EDD, via Layoff Atlas
December 20 is already a notable date on the national layoff calendar. Earlier filings effective that same day include Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream's 803-worker temporary filing in Howard County, Maryland, and smaller filings in Pennsylvania and Washington. Safeway's 92 workers add to a date that was already carrying several hundred scheduled layoffs before this notice surfaced. For workers, a mid-December effective date means final weeks of employment run into the holidays, when hiring and claim processing slow down.
It is also worth stating plainly what a WARN filing is and is not. These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A filing records what an employer told the state it intends to do; plans can change, workers can be recalled or reassigned, and some notices are later amended or cancelled. The 92-worker figure is the number in the notice, not a count of people who will ultimately lose their jobs.
California's outsized share of the national picture
Safeway's filing lands in the state carrying the largest totals in Layoff Atlas's current 90-day window. Nationally, the registry tracks 673 notices covering 65,395 reported workers, with 29 counts unavailable, updated October 29, 2026. California alone accounts for 17,715 of those workers, just ahead of Washington at 16,879. Illinois (4,385), Texas (3,280), and Georgia (2,492) round out the top five. Together, California and Washington hold more than half of all workers in the current window — a concentration driven by large filings in both states over the past three months.
California's longer archive puts the current numbers in perspective. The state page shows 17,621 non-cancelled imported notices reporting 1,455,786 workers, with 172 notices carrying future effective dates. In 2026 alone, California has logged 1,193 notices covering 63,959 workers, and over the last 365 days the state recorded 1,385 official filings covering 71,769 workers. The source check for California's data was October 29, 2026.
The Richmond filing fits a pattern in California's recent records: grocery and food-sector employers appear alongside the technology and manufacturing names that dominate headlines. Recent California filings include a 49-worker closure in Chino, a 90-worker closure in Rancho Cucamonga, and a 229-worker layoff in San Jose, all noticed within the past two weeks.
What the coming weeks look like
The six upcoming effective weeks on the national calendar currently total 33,811 scheduled workers:
- Week of October 30: 7,049 workers
- Week of November 6: 3,302 workers
- Week of November 13: 8,793 workers
- Week of November 20: 7,181 workers
- Week of November 27: 5,778 workers
- Week of December 4: 1,708 workers
Safeway's December 20 effective date falls just beyond this six-week window, in the stretch where recently filed notices — those with the full 60-plus-day notice period — begin to land. That is the normal mechanics of WARN data: a notice filed in late October shows up as a December effective date, and the calendar fills in weeks ahead as new filings arrive.
What workers at the Richmond site can expect next
A closure notice starts a clock, not just for the employer but for the support systems around it. California's EDD Rapid Response program typically contacts affected workers to offer job-search help, retraining information, and unemployment-insurance guidance before the effective date. Workers can also check whether they are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, which may add recall rights, severance, or transfer options beyond what the WARN Act itself requires.
For anyone reading a WARN notice about their own workplace, the most useful details are the exact effective date, whether the event is a closure or a layoff, and whether the notice lists a union representative or an employer contact. Those details set the timelines for unemployment claims, health coverage, and severance paperwork.
On its own, Safeway's Richmond filing is a single mid-size closure in a state that records hundreds of them. What it confirms is that the flow of WARN notices has not slowed into the final months of 2026, California remains the center of that activity, and December's calendar is still filling in, one filing at a time.
Data source: Layoff Atlas
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