Laid off from Burlington Stores.

What Burlington Stores layoffs have meant for employees

Most of Burlington's associates work in its stores, and most are part-time or seasonal, by the count in its fiscal 2025 10-K. The same filing says the company hires extra associates and adds part-time hours for its peak selling seasons, so a store's schedule is built to expand and contract through the year. If you were hired for a busy season, it's reasonable to ask at the start how long the role and the extra hours are expected to run. If your hours shrink later, your state's unemployment benefits page is where that state's own rules are laid out.

A Burlington store that closes is often moving rather than going away. In fiscal 2025 the company relocated 18 stores and closed 9 outright, that 10-K shows, and chief executive Michael O'Sullivan told WWD in 2026 that a relocation usually lands within a mile or so of the old site. He also said the downsizings, which WWD put at about 25,000 square feet a store on average, hadn't changed staffing, because staffing follows a store's sales and traffic rather than its size. If your store is moving or shrinking, whether your position, hours and pay carry over to the new space is worth settling before the switch. If it's closing outright, a spot at the nearest other Burlington is the natural thing to raise, along with whether your pay rate comes with you.

Distribution work is the next biggest share of Burlington's jobs, and the 2020 shutdown reached it too. All of the distribution centers were running again by mid-June 2020, when the majority of stores had also reopened, according to the fiscal 2020 annual report. The fiscal 2025 10-K lists its distribution centers in Edgewater Park, Burlington and Logan, New Jersey, and San Bernardino, Redlands and Riverside, California, with a Georgia center in Ellabell expected to be fully running in fiscal 2026. If you work in one of the California buildings, California unemployment benefits sets out how a claim works in that state.

The 2020 response also cut pay at the top. Burlington's chief executive would take no salary, its directors would give up their cash pay and its executive team agreed to 50% salary cuts, the April 13 release said, while bonuses for fiscal 2019 and merit raises for fiscal 2020 were pushed back to the second and third quarters of fiscal 2020, the annual report says. If you were there that year and a raise or bonus seemed late, those are the quarters the company names.

The headquarters plan concerns the corporate staff at the U.S. Route 130 North campus in Burlington Township, a site Burlington intends to have rezoned for warehouse space, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. About 4,700 people worked at that campus and the company's Burlington County warehouses the year before the announcement, and a spokesperson put the company's New Jersey workforce at 8,000. Philadelphia's incentives include a year of free SEPTA passes for Burlington workers. If you're weighing whether the commute works, your team's start date, the fare once the free year ends and any relocation help are the numbers worth having in hand. If a New Jersey job ends instead, New Jersey unemployment benefits explains how a claim works there.

For participants in Burlington's Executive Severance Plan, the money comes with strings. A participant has to sign a general release of claims and not revoke it, then honor restrictive covenants for two years, as the 10-K summarizes the plan, and the plan defines its competing businesses as Kohl's, Macy's, TJX and Ross. If a separation agreement includes a release or limits on where you can work next, those provisions are worth reading slowly, and negotiating a severance agreement covers what people commonly push back on. If your health coverage came through Burlington, how COBRA works sets out the general rules for keeping it after a job ends.

A sourced history of Burlington Stores layoffs

• April 2020, Burlington furloughs most store and distribution center staff

  With stores and distribution centers still closed, Burlington furloughed most of their workers, said it would keep paying 100% of their health premiums and set up a hotline to help them reach government aid, its April 13 release shows.

• March 2020, Burlington closes every store for the pandemic

  Burlington temporarily closed all of its stores at the end of business on March 22, its fiscal 2020 annual report confirms, after a March 20 release promised affected associates two weeks of financial support.

What to do if you're laid off from Burlington Stores

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Burlington Stores's biggest hubs: California. 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 Burlington Stores's hub states run: California, 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.