Week Ahead: November 7 Is the Lightest Upcoming Layoff Week, With 4,326 Workers Scheduled

Not every week on the layoff calendar is heavy. The week labelled November 7 on Layoff Atlas's upcoming calendar carries 4,326 workers with scheduled effective dates — the lightest total among the five weeks still fully ahead, and a noticeable dip between two much heavier weeks.

That does not mean layoffs are slowing down. It means that, in the filings published so far, fewer effective dates land in that particular week than in the weeks around it. New notices can still arrive, and a single large filing can change a week's total quickly.

The six weeks on the calendar

Layoff Atlas groups upcoming effective dates by week. The current six-week picture, based on published effective dates, is:

• Week labelled October 24: 2,759 workers
• Week labelled October 31: 7,437 workers
• Week labelled November 7: 4,326 workers
• Week labelled November 14: 8,404 workers
• Week labelled November 21: 6,925 workers
• Week labelled November 28: 5,760 workers

Together, those six weeks account for 35,611 workers with scheduled effective dates. November 7's 4,326 is about 12 percent of that six-week total.

The only week with a smaller figure is the one labelled October 24, at 2,759 — the week now ending. Among the five weeks still fully ahead, November 7 is the clear lightest: the next-lightest, November 28, carries 5,760 workers, more than 1,400 above November 7.

How light is light?

Comparisons make the dip clearer. November 7's total is 4,078 workers below the heaviest week on the calendar, November 14, which carries 8,404 — in other words, November 7 is barely more than half the size of the heaviest week. It is also 3,111 workers below the week before it, October 31, at 7,437, a drop of roughly 42 percent from one week to the next.

Against the six-week average of about 5,935 workers per week, November 7 sits roughly 27 percent below average. That is a real dip, not a rounding difference. It is also worth keeping in proportion: 4,326 workers facing a scheduled effective date in a single week is still a large number of people, and it is higher than many full weeks recorded earlier in the year.

The shape of the calendar matters here. The weeks on either side of November 7 are both heavy — 7,437 before it and 8,404 after it. So November 7 looks less like the start of a quiet period and more like a single lighter week sandwiched between two busy ones.

The national picture behind the week

The weekly figures sit inside a larger 90-day window. Across that window, Layoff Atlas currently counts 704 notices covering 66,156 reported workers, with 33 notices carrying no available worker count. Those figures were last updated on October 24, 2026.

The state ranking behind those totals has barely moved. Washington leads with 17,073 reported workers, followed by California with 14,224. Together, those two states account for about 47 percent of all reported workers in the window. Illinois (4,626), Texas (3,652), and Ohio (3,180) round out the top five, and the five states combined account for about 65 percent of the total.

That concentration is a reminder that the national weekly totals are not spread evenly. A heavy or light week nationally can reflect a handful of large filings in one or two states as much as a broad national shift.

What to watch next

Three things will determine whether November 7 stays the lightest week:

First, the week of October 31 comes first, at 7,437 workers. If that week lands as scheduled, it will confirm that the busy stretch is already underway before the November 7 dip arrives.

Second, the week of November 14, at 8,404 workers, is the heaviest week on the calendar. Its size is the main reason November 7 stands out — the contrast between the two consecutive weeks is nearly double.

Third, new filings. WARN notices keep being published, and effective dates can be added to weeks that currently look light. A single filing of a few hundred workers would not erase the gap between November 7 and November 14, but a filing above 1,000 workers would narrow it noticeably.

How to read these numbers

All figures in this article describe reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN notice is an advance notification of a qualifying mass layoff or plant closure, filed with a state labor agency. Some notices are later postponed, reduced, or cancelled, and some workers counted in a notice may be recalled or reassigned. Coverage and reporting rules also vary by state, so a state with a low total may reflect gaps in public reporting rather than genuinely fewer layoffs.

Worker totals exclude notices where no count was available, so the true number of workers covered by published notices is somewhat higher than the headline totals. And because the weekly calendar groups workers by effective date rather than notice date, a week can look heavy long before the notices behind it were filed — or look light simply because its notices have not been published yet.

With those caveats in mind, the November 7 picture is still useful. It tells workers, employers, and local support services where the scheduled pressure eases, even briefly, in the weeks ahead.

Data source: Layoff Atlas.