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How Many Folks Have been Really Laid Off So Far in California? The Counties & Firms with the Largest Layoffs

Still not many layoffs but focused on the San Francisco Bay Area. Workers quickly found new jobs, and employment in California continued to rise.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Amidst all of these breathless layoff announcements from tech and social media companies, I’ll keep an eye on actual layoffs in California as disclosed in the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) reports. The big tech and social media companies are global companies and the layoff announcements are global and they’re just announcements and only some of them are happening in the US and they’re scattered across the US.

How many layoffs in California since July 1st?

In total, 54,679 layoffs across California have been announced in the WARN reports in the seven and a half months since July 1st, when this layoff tango began. This includes a variety of companies, from hospitals to Google, each for their own reasons.

But over the July 1-December period, employment rose by 229,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data (latest available), showing laid-off workers are generally being absorbed by other employers fairly quickly, and job growth continued .

Many employers, outbid for talent by tech and social media overstaffing and overpay frenzy, finally have a chance to hire staff on their terms.

The 15 counties with the most layoffs.

The table below shows the 15 counties with the most layoffs since July 1. However, here are some key points that complicate the picture:

The angel is the largest county in California with almost 10 million inhabitants. Over a quarter of California’s population lives in LA County. Many other counties are small. This is an important consideration since LA County had the most layoffs since July 1 (9,379), but was small given the size of the massive county.

But San Franciscowhich has less than 1/10 of the population (834,000), had 6,971 layoffs — even that’s a relatively small number given the size of San Francisco’s job market, but it was by far the largest layoff-per-population ratio in the state.

marine, a small-by-population county across the Golden Gate Bridge, has 578 layoffs from just one company, Autodesk, which is closing its Marin County headquarters and moving its headquarters to San Francisco. Most of its employees work hybrid from home. But it also reported 61 layoffs at its San Francisco office. The company announced in early February that it would lay off 250 of its global workforce. So it appears that Autodesk filed the WARN filing because it has permanently closed a facility, while most of the workers assigned to the Marin office will be assigned to the San Francisco office and will keep their jobs.

San Benitoa rural county south of Silicon Valley with a population of just 64,000 is at risk of losing its only hospital, Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital, which may file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy and reports 741 layoffs effective Feb. 18. Rural hospitals in the US are in trouble.

The top three counties with significant numbers of layoffs relative to their populations are San Francisco, Santa Clara (southern part of Silicon Valley), and San Mateo (northern part of Silicon Valley):

District: redundancies % of layoffs in CA Pop. in 1,000 Layoffs % of pop.
1 The angel 9,379 17.2% 9,861 0.1%
2 Santa Clara 7,069 12.9% 1,936 0.4%
3 san francisco 6,971 12.7% 834 0.8%
4 San Diego 5,533 10.1% 3,298 0.2%
5 alameda 4,705 8.6% 1,682 0.3%
6 Saint Matthew 4,330 7.9% 764 0.6%
7 Orange 3,594 6.6% 3.186 0.1%
8th Sacramento 1,553 2.8% 1,585 0.1%
9 San Bernardino 2,086 3.8% 2.181 0.1%
10 River bank 1,595 2.9% 2,418 0.1%
11 core 1,039 1.9% 909 0.1%
12 San Benito 789 1.4% 64 1.2%
13 Against coast 689 1.3% 1.165 0.1%
14 marine 682 1.2% 262 0.3%
15 Ventura 634 1.2% 843 0.1%
In total 50,648 92.6% 30,988 0.2%

In the US, even in good times, 1.8 million layoffs and layoffs a month.

Companies lay off workers for a variety of reasons, including company-specific issues. And companies are laying off workers for all sorts of reasons. This is part of the regular churn. Nobody writes about it because it happens all the time. These workers are absorbed relatively quickly by other employers and unemployment remains low.

Across the US as a whole, between 1.6 million and 1.8 million workers were laid off or laid off each month during the good times before the pandemic. And they found jobs relatively quickly.

But in the bad times, suddenly there are 2.5 million layoffs and layoffs a month, month after month, just as employers have stopped hiring and the number of unemployed looking for jobs surges as companies shut the hatches .

But that’s exactly what we don’t see yet. The total number of layoffs and layoffs in the US rose to 1.48 million in December from record lows a year ago, but remains well below the lows of the pre-pandemic good times, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Not released yet.

The WARN report also shows that some layoffs have an “effective date” in March or April and therefore those layoffs have not even happened yet, such as B. at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Intel, Wayfair and many others, including Gallo Vertriebsgesellschaft (Winzer Gallo closed his in-house wine distribution and outsourced this business to another company).

Other dismissals in the WARN report have an effective date later in 2023 and some as far as 2024.

California’s WARN Act requires employers with 75 or more employees to give advance notice to employees affected by plant closures and layoffs. With sufficient severance pay, employers may fire employees with immediate effect, but must report such layoffs to WARN.

WARN reports do not reflect layoffs at small businesses with fewer than 75 employees.

The 61 companies with over 200 layoffs in California since July 1st.

Of the 54,679 layoffs reported by several hundred companies in the WARN reports since July 1, 55% or 30,863 layoffs were reported by just 61 companies, each reporting 200 or more layoffs during that time.

Among these 61 companies are a number of hospitals, other healthcare providers and insurers.

The 10 largest layoff companies accounted for 24% of all layoffs in California. But wait…

Temporary layoffs. No. 4 on that list, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, reported “temporary” layoffs of 1,213 employees in November as it closed parts of its facilities to shift production to new facilities. Those laid-off employees returned to work in December.

Jabil (No. 3) also indicated that some of the layoffs were temporary. There are several other minor “temporary” layoffs in the WARN report and list below (displayed). The WARN report does not specify when workers will return to work.

Pursue redundancies
1 Meta Platforms, Inc. 2,726
2 Smithfield distribution 1,876
3 Jabil 1,661
4 Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream (temporarily) 1,213
5 Foreclosure 1,010
6 Twitter 997
7 Google 953
8th Cepheids 948
9 Amazon 890
10 Community Hospital Madera 772
11 San Benito Health Care District dba Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital 741
12 intel 721
13 Cisco 673
14 Autodesk 639
15 cue health 557
16 snap inc 485
17 Sciolex Corporation 461
18 ABM Industry Groups, LLC dba-Meta 434
19 Blue Shield of California 429
20 American Airlines 417
21 first student 406
22 Lam Research 400
23 DHL supply chain 394
24 door line 386
25 PayPal 378
26 Infineon Technologies Americas Corp. 375
27 Crest Beverages, LLC 372
28 Brown & Toland Physician Services Org. 364
29 Elk Grove Auto Group 355
30 Gallo Sales Co. 355
31 Nutrition Corp, dba Fresh & Lean 353
32 Rivian 351
33 ThermoFisher Scientific 335
34 Amy’s kitchen 331
35 Löws Hotels & Co 321
36 destiny therapy 315
37 amgen 307
38 Teva Parental Medicines, Inc. 305
39 Tesla 298
40 Layer Technologies Inc. 296
41 TAP Manufacturing LLC and TAP Worldwide LLC dba 4 Wheel Parts 293
42 Zymergen Inc. 293
43 HCI, LLC 281
44 Wilhelm LLC 274
45 Nuro, Inc. 269
46 Bristol Myers Squibb 261
47 United Furniture Industries, Inc. 261
48 Argo AI, LLC 257
49 Western digital 251
50 Seanager, Inc. 234
51 Enlightenment 232
52 Lyft, Inc. 227
53 carbon health 226
54 Triple canopy 226
55 Owen Corning 225
56 Personnel service providers in the healthcare sector 224
57 Aseptic Solutions USA Ventures LLC 211
58 Athas Capital Group, Inc. 211
59 Terre du Soleil dba Auberge du Soleil 206
60 American Advisory Group 204
61 oracle 201
62 Labor Day, Inc. 196
In total 30,863

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