May 2009: Washington WARN activity

The comparison

The worker total was 1,596 higher than May 2008. The filing count was 6 higher than that same month a year earlier. Comparing the same month a year apart takes seasonal hiring out of the picture. It doesn't explain why the number moved, though, so treat a gap as a question rather than an answer.

All 9 filings in the current month included a worker count. Keep in mind that plenty of layoffs never reach WARN at all, because they fall under the thresholds that trigger a filing.

Where the number comes from

Microsoft's filing reported 1,200 workers, about 67% of the month's reported total. The other 8 filings reported 594 workers combined. When one filing carries that much of a month, the monthly number is really a story about that one employer.

5 filings were classified as layoffs and 4 as closures. These labels alone do not explain the employer's reason.

What to check next

Read a filing's timing and location before treating its count as a local job loss. A large notice can dominate a statewide total. The records here do not establish how many distinct people ultimately lost work, whether jobs were replaced elsewhere, or what happened to unemployment.

For an employer's latest record, use the official ESD WARN search. Our reading guide walks through dates, scope, and updates.

Evidence for this edition

We selected active public records by filing month from the saved site snapshot. Superseded source versions were excluded. We summed each available worker count and counted missing values separately. Separate notices can overlap; the total is a sum of reported counts. 0 undated records in the full snapshot could not be assigned to a month.

The evidence file contains the public rows for the three months above, any undated rows, and their calculated summaries. This edition stays fixed when the live tracker changes. A future correction will carry a dated note.

Download this edition's public evidence (JSON) · Review and correction policy