South Dakota Layoffs 2026: WARN Numbers Explained

While the national WARN registry tracked 737 notices covering 67,101 reported workers over the last 90 days, South Dakota barely registered at all. In 2026, the state reported just 4 notices and 87 workers — the quietest stretch in its recorded history. And yet South Dakota is one of the best-documented states in the registry: 79 of its 80 notices come directly from government records, not secondary reporting. A quiet state, clean data, and nothing new in more than two months — here's what the numbers actually show.

The headline figures

South Dakota's full archive holds 80 non-cancelled imported WARN notices reporting 8,748 affected workers. In 2026, that collapsed to 4 notices and 87 reported workers — a fraction of the activity the state used to see:

• 2026: 4 notices, 87 workers
• 2025: 6 notices, 403 workers
• 2024: 6 notices, 651 workers
• 2023: 5 notices, 612 workers
• 2022: 5 notices, 662 workers
• 2020: 7 notices, 804 workers (the pandemic-era peak)

This is the lowest worker total in the state's imported history for any year on record. Even 2010, the quietest post-recession year, reported 79 workers across 2 notices — and 2026's four filings landed almost entirely in the first half of the year.

These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. WARN notices are advance notifications of qualifying mass layoffs and plant closures filed with the state labor agency — they describe what employers said they planned to do, not what ultimately happened.

The best-sourced data in the registry

South Dakota stands out for how little of its record is secondhand. Of its 80 notices, 79 are direct government records and just 1 is an attributed secondary record. In the last 365 days, all 4 eligible official filings came straight from the state source — 87 reported workers, none with unavailable counts.

Contrast that with several states where the entire archive is built from secondary records and no official filings have arrived in a year or more. South Dakota's picture is small, but it is trustworthy: when the state says there were 4 filings, that's the state's own ledger talking.

The catch is staleness. The newest official notice date is August 10, 2026 — more than two months ago. Four notices in the archive carry unavailable worker counts, and 0 notices in the state carry future effective dates. South Dakota has nothing scheduled on the national upcoming-weeks radar at all.

What the silence means — and what it doesn't

A quiet year in a state of roughly 900,000 people is not necessarily proof of a strong labor market. South Dakota has fewer large employers per capita, so mass-layoff thresholds are simply hit less often — the 100-worker WARN trigger covers a smaller share of the state's economy than it does in, say, Texas or California.

Three things to keep in mind when reading these numbers:

1. Missing coverage is not zero layoffs. The registry only captures qualifying WARN filings from connected sources. Layoffs that fall below the threshold, happen outside covered sectors, or simply never reach the state record are invisible here.
2. The data goes stale fast. A two-month gap with no new filings could mean nothing is happening — or that the next filing batch hasn't been processed yet. The source check on South Dakota's page ran October 17, 2026, so the silence is current through that date.
3. Small counts swing wildly. One plant closure can quintuple a year's total. South Dakota's entire 2026 worker count (87) is smaller than a single mid-size filing in many states.

South Dakota in the national picture

Zoomed out, the state is a rounding error in the national numbers: Washington leads with 16,855 reported workers, followed by California at 15,067, Illinois at 4,626, Texas at 3,784, and Ohio at 3,180 — all in the 90-day window. The weeks ahead carry thousands of workers each on effective dates: 7,781 workers effective the week of November 15 alone, and 6,527 the week of November 22.

South Dakota contributes none of that. No upcoming effective dates, no big filings, no looming closures on the registry. For a state with a direct-from-government paper trail and almost no secondary noise, that quiet is worth noting — but it's worth double-checking too. If you're tracking South Dakota specifically, the state's own labor department listings remain the authoritative check, since the registry's view is only as fresh as its last sync.

Data source: Layoff Atlas