Companies that laid off the most employees across the United States so far in 2024

In a wave of layoffs that has been occurring since 2023, major tech companies including Apple, Dell, and IBM are downsizing their global workforce. Thousands of jobs were slashed in the sector but it is just one of the industries where people have been laid off over the past three months. In January alone, companies and government agencies across the United States laid off and discharged more than 1.57 million employees.

With economic hardships persisting and inevitable changes to the labor market such as the use of AI technologies, thousands of Americans will likely lose their jobs in the coming months. Interested to see how businesses in the U.S. address falling revenues, the team at Tradingpedia decided to take a look at the companies that laid off the most employees in the first quarter of the year.

Looking at the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notices filed by companies as required by federal law, we discovered that:

• The tech sector is responsible for some of the most significant mass layoffs in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2024
• Major companies that already filed WARN notices in 2024 are Google, Walmart, Broadcom, UPS, Nordstrom, and Cisco
• In January, the wave of layoffs has slowed down, down 2.2% from the previous month and by 15.9% compared to January 2023
• More than a quarter of all layoffs in January occurred in the professional and business services sector but it is mining and logging where the biggest spike in layoff levels can be seen from January 2023; the increase is 140%

Companies’ layoffs according to WARN notices since January 2024

Under a 1988 federal law known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act or just the WARN Act, employers are required to notify the state of any mass layoffs or closures they have planned. WARN notices are filed 60 calendar days in advance of layoffs and are public records, so they can be accessed from the websites of state labor departments.

So, it is fairly simple to track the layoffs announced by companies in the United States. Of course, there are certain exceptions but along with the federal law, many states have also introduced state-level legislation that is similar to the WARN Act. In most cases, employers with 100 or more workers are required to file layoff notices, and whenever they close down the business permanently.

But closures are far from being the only cause for a mass layoff. Often, job cuts are seen as necessary when businesses want to increase revenues or limit their losses. Other common reasons for layoffs include company restructuring, acquisitions, mergers, or “workforce rebalancing”. In most cases, however, mass layoffs affect thousands of people in a certain area, not just those who lose their jobs but their families, as well.

RaterLabs (Appen)

In February, search engine rating company RaterLabs said it was slashing 3,657 jobs as a result of ending a contract with Google. The Kirkland, Washington-based company rates search engine results and also trains and tests AI systems. Employees of the third-party contractor have worked on improving Google’s generative AI chatbot Bard, now known as Gemini.

RaterLabs’ parent company, Appen, has worked on similar projects for major clients such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple. Now that the contract with Google is ending, thousands are being laid off. Most of these, however, are remote workers and only a handful are located in the Kirkland offices. The news follows negative financial results for Appen, which reported a net revenue of 247 million for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023. This was a drop of 29.42% compared to the nearly 388.5 million reported in 2022.

Broadcom, VMware

Semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom is laying off a huge number of employees, most from its Palo Alto, California headquarters, according to a WARN notice. The company acquired cloud computing company VMware, Inc., a process that started back in 2022. The $61-billion acquisition was completed in October 2023 and in November, the chip maker said it would be cutting its workforce.

The layoffs are and will be affecting more than 1,300 workers in California, as well as 217 employees in Atlanta, Georgia, 577 VMware employees in Austin, Texas, 75 employees in Burlington, Massachusetts, 150 in Boston, and many more. The loss of jobs, however, was not linked to falling revenues. According to the company’s December news release, revenue grew 8% year-over-year to a record $35.8 billion in fiscal year 2023. Broadcom President and CEO, Hock Tan, said revenue growth was driven by “investments in accelerators and network connectivity for AI by hyperscalers”. The company is expecting consolidated revenue for 2024 around $50 billion and adjusted EBITDA to $30 billion.

GDI Integrated Facility Services

The company, which offers cleaning and integrated facility management services, is laying off 1,849 employees in multiple locations in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida. Its headquarters are in Montréal, Canada but it has offices and facilities on both sides of the border. In February, GDI announced the sale of its janitorial products distribution business. Earlier, the company acquired the facility services business of Atalian USA.

Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies (also Unity Software Inc.), the company behind the popular game engine Unity, is also reducing its workforce as part of a restructuring of its business. In a January filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it said it would be laying off 1,800 employees or roughly a quarter of its workforce.

Unity is just one of many businesses in the gaming industry that have been cutting jobs over the past year or so. In 2024 alone, more than 8,000 layoffs have been announced by companies such as Activision Blizzard and Xbox (both part of Microsoft), Twitch, Electronic Arts, Riot Games, Playtica, Discord, Lost Boys Interactive, and more.

UPS

In its fourth-quarter earnings report, United Parcel Service announced consolidated revenues of $24.9 billion, a 7.8% drop from the fourth quarter of 2022. Revenues for the fiscal year 2023 were $91 billion, a decrease of 9.35% from 2022. In an effort to cut costs, the delivery company also announced 12,000 layoffs, projected to save UPS around $1 billion in costs, according to CEO Carol Tomé.

So far, WARN notices show 1,485 laid-off employees across the country. In the first stage of workforce reductions, the company is letting go of 162 workers in Livonia, Michigan where it is closing its facility, 87 workers in Nashua, New Hampshire, and 118 in Halethorpe, Maryland. Layoff notices have also been filed for 331 employees in Portland, Oregon, 130 employees in Warwick, Rhode Island, 118 in Windsor, Connecticut, and more.

Tyson Foods

Recently Tyson Foods, the largest meat and poultry producer in the United States, announced the closure of several of its plants. According to public records, WARN notices have already been sent for its facility in Perry, Iowa, a small town outside Des Moines. Data shows that 1,276 employees will lose their jobs once the Perry pork plant closes at the end of June. The shutdown will be devastating for Perry, which has a population of around 7,830 people and 16% of them work in the pork plant.

Other job cuts were announced in Dexter, Missouri, and Corydon, Indiana, while Tyson Foods facilities in Jacksonville, Florida, and Columbia, South Carolina, are also slated to close by the end of the year. In 2023 alone, the company laid off around 4,200 workers, which apparently helped cut its losses. In the fourth-quarter earnings report, Donnie King, President & CEO, Tyson Foods, said that their decisions made them “more operationally efficient” and improved adjusted operating income. For the twelve months ending September 30, 2023, Tyson Foods reported revenue of $52.88 billion, a decrease of only 0.75% from the previous fiscal year.

Hospital Sisters Health System

Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS) is a non-profit healthcare organization based in Springfield, Illinois but operates a network of hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices in Illinois and Wisconsin. The layoffs of more than a thousand people come as a result of the closure of HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls and the associated Prevea Health facilities.

The layoffs, which were announced through WARN notices in January affected nearly 1,400 workers across 21 locations in Wisconsin. Furthermore, the hospital closures are now limiting local people’s access to healthcare. This urged Gov. Tony Evers to approve a bill for securing $15 million in crisis response resources, which will be used to support healthcare access in Western Wisconsin.

Northrop Grumman

With annual revenues of over $30 billion and roughly 95,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world, Northrop Grumman is one of the largest aerospace and defense technology developers in the world. It is based in West Falls Church, Virginia, but some of its largest facilities are located in California where the company employs around 30,000 people.

In several layoff WARN notices sent to the California Employment Development Department in early March, Northrop Grumman announced that 1,069 people would lose their jobs. This includes 731 employees from the Space Park in Redondo Beach, which employs around 10,000 people, as well as other workers in Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, and Azusa.

It is unclear why the defense contractor decided to cut jobs but it is not the financial results; revenues for the year ending December 31 increased 7.34% year-over-year to $39.3 billion. However, in February, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Space Force had cancelled a classified multi-billion dollar program, in which the defense company was developing a military communications satellite.

Walmart

Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail corporation Walmart, which is the world’s largest employer with roughly 2.2 million employees, has more than 5,000 stores in the United States. So, it is often found on lists of companies with the most layoffs and our ranking is no exception. Since January, the company has announced the closure of several stores and has filed several WARN notices, as required by law.

Among them is a facility in Columbus, Ohio, two branches in San Diego County, California, and a store in Redmont, Washington. In total, Walmart has laid off 1,042 employees since the beginning of the year.

Wayfair

In January, digital home goods retailer Wayfair announced it would be cutting 13% of its global workforce. This includes a little over a thousand employees in the U.S., who according to our calculations equal roughly 8% of its overall staff. According to a January layoff notice, 936 Wayfair employees would be losing their jobs in Boston, Massachusetts, while in Mountain View, California, there would be another 72 job reductions.

The layoffs come as a result of the increased hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic when many people preferred or were forced to shop online, which resulted in higher online sales but also ballooned customer service teams. Over the past year or so, however, online retailers have been reducing their staff following the decreased demand. In 2023, Wayfair reported a 1.76% drop in revenues to $12 billion from the previous year when the figure stood at $12.2 billion.

Layoffs at the state level

Are workers in some states being laid off more than in others? Apart from the WARN data, the team at Tradingpedia decided to look at official statistics about the number of layoffs and discharges from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to the figures for January 2024 (data for the first quarter of the year is still unavailable), 1.57 million people were laid off during the month, or roughly 1% of all working people in the United States.

As expected, the states with the largest number of layoffs are the most populous ones, namely California (approx. 163,000), Texas (119,000), Florida (94,000), and New York (92,000). But if we look at the layoff rates (i.e. the laid-off people as a percentage of all employed people), states such as Delaware, New Mexico, Montana, Nebraska, and Wyoming are coming up on top. This means that people there lose their jobs at a much higher rate than in other states. Texas, Ohio, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, on the other hand, have the lowest layoff rates in the country.

Industries where the most layoffs occurred in January 2024

The stats for January also show the sectors of the economy that laid off the most workers, with professional and business services leading with 446,000 layoffs in January 2024 alone. While this figure is massive, (nearly half a million people who lost their jobs!), and represents almost a third of all layoffs during the month, the sector is actually huge. It employs close to 23 million people in professional, scientific, and technical services; management of companies and enterprises; administrative, support and waste management, and remediation services.

So, if we account for the number of workers employed in the different industries, it turns out that the most significant layoffs occurred in the arts, entertainment, and recreation. Around 72,000 people were laid off or discharged, which represents 2.8% of those employed in the sector.

Methodology

For the list of companies with the most layoffs since January 2024, the team at Tradingpedia looked at multiple WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) records from state labor departments and agencies. We also checked the Warned Databases at websites such as LayoffData and WARNTracker.

We looked at the companies’ financial results for 2023 or data for the equivalent period of the fiscal year they reported. In addition, to show the continuing wave of layoffs in its entirety, we sourced the number of layoffs and discharges across states and different industries for January 2024 published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.