What twenty years of Washington layoff filings actually show

Most years look a lot alike

From 2004 through 2019, Washington averaged about 51 WARN notices a year covering roughly 6,400 workers. The quiet years dip to the low thirties. The busier ones reach the low seventies. Nothing in that stretch prepares you for what came next.

Then 2020 arrived: 266 notices covering 46,824 reported workers. That is five times the notice count of a typical year and more than seven times the worker total.

• Washington ESD WARN requirements

The spike happened faster than you would think

Washington was averaging six or seven notices a month through late 2019 and into February 2020. In March the count jumped to 40. April hit 52 notices covering 11,708 workers, the busiest single month in the archive.

June looks almost as heavy at 12,695 workers, though for a different reason. One Boeing filing that month accounted for 5,798 of them. A single large employer can swing a monthly total on its own, which is worth remembering any time you see a spike.

• Washington ESD WARN requirements

Who filed the biggest notices in spring 2020

The largest filings that spring came from places you might not associate with mass layoffs. The YMCA of Greater Seattle reported 2,222 workers in April. Seattle Goodwill Industries filed for 2,192 the following day. Pacific Northwest Ballet reported 733.

Manufacturing showed up too, with Alcoa Intalco Works in Whatcom County reporting 700 in late April. But the spring filings skew heavily toward organizations that depend on people gathering in person.

• BLS occupational employment FAQ

2021 fell off a cliff, and 2025 quietly got busy

The year after the spike is the quietest in the entire archive: 31 notices covering 3,228 workers. Some of that is real recovery. Some of it is that employers who were going to file had already filed.

The more interesting recent number is 2025, which recorded 132 notices and 31,257 workers. That is the second-highest worker total in twenty-plus years of filings, well above 2008 and 2009. It arrived without the kind of single shock that drove 2020.

• Washington labor market information

What these numbers cannot tell you

A WARN notice records an announcement, not an outcome. Plans change, recalls happen, and some announced positions are never actually cut. Adding up worker counts gives you the size of what was announced rather than a count of people who lost work.

Coverage is partial as well. WARN applies to larger employers meeting specific thresholds, so smaller layoffs never appear here at all. And 304 notices in this archive carry no county, which means county totals undercount by a little.

Use the filings as a starting point and check the official ESD record before treating any figure as settled.

• Check the official ESD WARN record