Laid off from American Electric Power.

What American Electric Power layoffs have meant for employees

AEP's 2010 cost cuts, as its 2011 quarterly report describes them, its 2024 buyout, in its third-quarter 2024 report, and the General Severance Plan in its 2026 proxy statement all start from the same rule, in which a year of service earns two weeks of base pay. If you qualify under that plan, as a full-time employee whose job a restructuring or downsizing directly ended and who releases claims against AEP, you can estimate what its formula comes to from your base pay and years with the company. A decade of service comes to 20 weeks of base pay. The 52-week maximum arrives at 26 years, anyone with one to four years lands on the plan's eight-week minimum, and someone with less than a year gets four.

If the plan applies to you, the proxy ties its payment to releasing claims against AEP, and that release is where negotiating a severance agreement comes in. The plan's health piece, eligibility for medical and dental benefits at the rates active employees pay, ends after 12 months or once another employer's coverage is open to you, whichever comes first, so a new job's health plan, and how soon you'd be eligible for it, belongs in the same calculation as its pay. Outplacement is part of the plan too, as the proxy describes it. Because the proxy describes the payment as a lump sum, taxes on severance covers how such a payment is withheld.

Most of the January cuts fell in Ohio, where AEP had about 6,400 employees before the layoffs, NBC4 reported, and AEP tied both the layoffs and the buyout to costs. The layoffs were necessary given the higher cost of providing reliable service, the company's media relations director told NBC4, and the company's third-quarter report said the buyout's savings would help offset rising operating expenses and high interest costs. Fewer than half of AEP's employees could take the package, and because AEP refilled some of the positions people left, for some who took it the job went on without them.

For people at AEP's plants, the useful part of the record is the lead time. The 2015 closings had been announced four years ahead, and the Associated Press quoted an AEP spokeswoman saying the company spent those years trying to place affected workers in other AEP jobs, while Indiana Michigan Power set Tanners Creek's retirement for mid-2015 in a 2013 AEP release. Conesville's closing came two years sooner than first planned, and there the help came to the plant itself, with OhioMeansJobs and Coshocton County's job and family services office running resume and interview classes on site, Ohio Valley ReSource reported, and the local Central Ohio Technical College branch holding job fairs. If a plant where you work has a retirement date, the months before it are when any offer of another AEP job, a severance package and, for those who qualify, retirement can be set side by side.

If your AEP job was in Ohio or Indiana, where AEP's notices in our WARN tracker went, Ohio unemployment benefits and Indiana unemployment benefits set out each state's claim steps. The January 2024 cuts also reached Virginia, a spokesperson told WDBJ7, and Virginia unemployment benefits covers a claim there. AEP Texas had 1,730 employees as 2025 closed, by AEP's annual report for 2025, and Texas unemployment benefits applies in that state, while the rest of AEP's 11-state territory is under unemployment benefits by state.

A sourced history of American Electric Power layoffs

• April 2024, AEP's voluntary severance program

  About 7,400 of AEP's 16,800 employees were eligible, its third-quarter 2024 report says, for a package of two weeks' base pay per service year, four weeks at least and 52 at most. About 1,000 took it, nearly all leaving in July.

• January 2024, 270 layoffs across AEP's 11 states

  Of those cuts, 170 were at the Columbus headquarters or AEP Ohio, AEP's media relations director told NBC4, and he said the company believed no WARN notice was required. In Virginia nine were affected, five in Roanoke, a spokesperson told WDBJ7.

• 2019 and 2020, Conesville Plant closing in Ohio

  Two of the plant's three remaining units went dark in May 2019, the last set for May 2020, Ohio Valley ReSource reported, and about 25 workers had found other AEP jobs. Its notices in our tracker listed 50 and 83 jobs.

• 2015, closing notices at six AEP coal plants

  AEP gave the states and workers at six coal plants notice of May 31 closings, the Associated Press reported, affecting more than 250 people. Indiana Michigan Power's Tanners Creek was one, its notice in our tracker listing 92 jobs.

• April 2010, cost cuts eliminate 2,461 AEP positions

  AEP began cutting labor and other costs that April, a 2011 quarterly report says, and most of the people whose positions were eliminated left May 31. Its severance program tied pay to years of service.

What to do if you're laid off from American Electric Power

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. American Electric Power's biggest hubs: Ohio, Indiana. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what American Electric Power's hub states run: Ohio, Indiana, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.