One month ago, Washington sat at the top of the national layoff ranking. It no longer does — California has pulled ahead — but Washington remains firmly in second place, and its 2026 numbers are still climbing. This is a refresh of our October 8 Washington spotlight, with a month of new filings behind it.
The short version: Washington has reported 28,822 workers across 136 WARN notices so far in 2026, and the state has already filed more notices this year than in all of 2025.
The 2026 numbers so far
Washington's 2026 tally stands at 136 notices covering 28,822 reported workers. The notice count has already passed 2025's full-year total of 132, and the worker count is at 92 percent of 2025's full-year total of 31,257 — with roughly eight weeks of the year still to go. On the current pace, Washington will finish 2026 ahead of 2025 on both measures.
The longer archive tells the same story. Washington has 1,531 non-cancelled imported WARN notices in the Layoff Atlas registry, covering 250,220 workers. Over the last 365 days, the state recorded 153 eligible official filings reporting 29,826 workers, and not one of those filings is missing a worker count. The newest official notice date is November 4, 2026, and 45 notices have future effective dates — filings already on the books for layoffs that have not happened yet.
Washington in the national picture
Nationally, the 90-day window now holds 706 notices covering 65,134 reported workers, with 31 counts unavailable. Washington accounts for 17,411 of those workers — 26.7 percent of the national total — second only to California's 21,514.
Together, California and Washington hold 38,925 workers, or 59.8 percent of every worker in the national 90-day window. The gap between the two has widened: California leads by 4,103 workers, up from a 3,401-worker gap on November 6. Washington was ahead as recently as late October; the lead changed hands around October 30, and California has stretched it since.
That concentration matters. When two states hold nearly three-fifths of all reported workers, a single large filing in either one moves the national total more than a whole month of filings in most other states.
The recent filings behind the numbers
The last few weeks of Washington filings have been steady rather than spectacular — no single filing above 200 workers, but a run of mid-size notices that add up:
- Alaska Airlines, 121 workers — filed November 3, 2026.
- Amazon, 95 workers — filed November 4, 2026, effective December 7, 2026.
- Comcast, 159 workers — filed October 30, 2026.
- Seattle Marriott, 91 workers, and Lion Brothers, 30 workers — both filed November 5, 2026.
None of these is a plant closure of the scale Washington saw in 2020. They are the ordinary churn of a large state economy, and Washington's 2026 total has been built from volume — 136 notices — rather than from a handful of giant filings.
What history says
Washington's yearly totals show how unusual the last two years have been. The 2020 pandemic spike produced 249 notices covering 45,020 workers, the largest year in the archive. Filings then collapsed — 31 notices and 3,228 workers in 2021, and 34 notices and 5,691 workers in 2022 — before rebounding in 2023 (72 notices, 21,427 workers), dipping in 2024 (59 notices, 12,188 workers), and surging again in 2025 (132 notices, 31,257 workers).
Against that history, 2026 is the third-highest worker year since 2020, behind only 2020 and 2025 — and it is on track to pass 2025 before the year ends.
How to read these numbers
First, these are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN notice records what an employer told the state it intends to do; the final headcount can differ, and some planned layoffs are reduced or cancelled before the effective date.
Second, Washington's data is unusually clean. The registry's Washington records are 1,530 direct government records and zero attributed secondary records, with zero unavailable worker counts in the last 365 days. That is not true of every state, and it is part of why Washington ranks so high: better reporting captures more of what actually happened.
Third, Washington follows the federal WARN Act's 60-day notice rule. Unlike California, New York, New Jersey, and a handful of other states, Washington has no broader state mini-WARN law, so the federal thresholds apply: generally 100 or more full-time employees, with 60 days' notice for a plant closing or a mass layoff.
What to watch next
Nationally, the six weeks ahead hold 30,498 workers in scheduled layoffs: 4,155 in the week of November 7, a peak of 8,510 in the week of November 14, then 6,925, 6,063, 1,090, and 3,755 in the weeks that follow. Washington's 45 notices with future effective dates will contribute to those weeks.
The question for the rest of the year is whether Washington passes 2025's 31,257 workers. It needs 2,436 more — about eight percent of its current total — and at the recent pace it is likely to get there before Christmas. If it does, 2026 will close as Washington's second-biggest layoff year since 2020, built not on one big closure but on a steady drumbeat of mid-size filings.
Data source: Layoff Atlas
Top comments (0)