Laid off from California Resources Corporation.

What California Resources Corporation layoffs have meant for employees

Engineers appear in the 2021, 2024 and 2026 accounts of who was being cut, beside scientists in 2021 and geologists in 2024 and 2026. CRC's August 2024 letter named a chief operating officer and a general counsel alongside engineering technicians, facilities engineers, geologists, petrophysicists and reservoir and drilling engineers. The 2021 round, by the Bakersfield Californian's account, ran from administrative support to engineers, scientists and technicians. Senior engineers and geologists were among the 56 people in the February 2026 letter, according to the paper's February 2026 story, which said workers at C&J Well Services, Berry's oil-field service company, were sure to be spared. The August 2023 round reached field sites too, with California's WARN report listing notices for Tupman, Taft and Shafter as well as the Ming Avenue office.

A WARN notice counts the layoffs at the sites it names, and twice the record shows CRC's cuts running past that count. In August 2020, during the Chapter 11 case, CRC's headcount fell by about 150 people, by our count from its 2020 annual report, while the Bakersfield notice that month listed 55 jobs, one of the CRC notices you can find in our WARN tracker. In 2024 the letter's 69 involuntary layoffs sat beside 49 people leaving the same offices voluntarily, counted separately from the layoffs. So if your job ended outside Bakersfield, or through a voluntary exit, a notice that leaves your site out doesn't settle whether you were part of a reduction.

In 2021 and 2024, CRC told those it was cutting that they'd be paid through the notice period without working it. Under the 2024 letter, people were to be released from reporting during their notice pay, their employment was to end when that pay ran out, and they'd then be eligible for severance under the company's plans, with no bumping rights into other jobs. It also said laid-off staff could apply for any CRC job that opened later, and promised word on outplacement services. If you're on notice pay under terms like those, the end of that pay is also the end of your employment, which makes it the point where severance eligibility under those plans begins. The same notice pointed people to California's EDD for unemployment insurance, and California's unemployment rules set out who qualifies.

CRC's stated reasons have shifted from round to round. In 2023 it called its cuts an organizational redesign. They came months after a February realignment that CRC said would eventually separate its oil business from its carbon management division, and after it said it would curtail drilling investment partly because of a protracted legal fight over oil permitting in Kern County. Those layoffs came while oil prices were relatively strong, the Bakersfield Californian noted, though oil field layoffs have historically come when prices are low. After the Aera merger, spokesman Rich Venn said the layoffs were needed to bring the company's resources in line with its activity levels and blamed "the continued assault on local production, driven by activists in Sacramento," according to the paper's August 2024 story. Before the Berry layoffs, CRC had said that deal would save it $90 million through near-term corporate staffing cuts and other efficiencies.

If you came to CRC from Aera, the 2024 layoffs CRC announced were at what the Californian called the Aera Energy offices in Bakersfield, and they followed a cut Aera made on its own. Aera said it cut about 100 positions two months before CRC's August 2023 layoffs, in an efficiency drive that began soon after its February 2023 sale to a German asset manager and a Canadian pension fund. After the merger CRC also changed Aera's pension and retiree plans, which its third-quarter 2024 report lays out. For people from Berry, the February 2026 letter put the plan at 56 people, and California's two notices for it list 55 jobs, 46 of them at the River Run Boulevard office Berry had used and 9 at Ming Avenue.

A sourced history of California Resources Corporation layoffs

• February 2026, Bakersfield office layoffs after the Berry merger

  CRC planned to lay off 56 people at its Ming Avenue and River Run offices, the Bakersfield Californian reported from a February 16 letter promising severance pay. Workers were to learn by October 31 whether they were affected.

• August 2024, reduction in force after the Aera merger

  After the July 1 Aera merger, CRC committed in August, its third-quarter 2024 report shows, to cutting 12% of its combined headcount. About 69 Ming Avenue jobs faced involuntary layoff under its August 21 letter, and about 49 people were leaving voluntarily on similar terms.

• August 2023, organizational redesign in Kern County

  About 60 people, all employees in Kern, were let go on August 28, CRC confirmed in an email reported by the Bakersfield Californian, in what it called an organizational redesign that reduced staffing through attrition, retirement and layoffs.

• February 2021, post-bankruptcy layoffs in Bakersfield

  CRC said, according to the Bakersfield Californian, that it was laying off 50 Bakersfield workers, from administrative support staff to engineers, scientists and technicians, through April 1 under its post-bankruptcy restructuring, with severance pay to follow.

• August 2020, cuts during the Chapter 11 case

  During CRC's Chapter 11 case, organizational changes in August took its headcount from 1,250 to about 1,100, according to the company's 2020 10-K, and a later Bakersfield Californian story says CRC announced 55 local layoffs that month.

• Fourth quarter 2019, organizational redesign

  Operational efficiencies and an organizational redesign cut CRC's workforce to about 1,250, its 2019 10-K says, slightly more than half the staff it started with in 2014, at a cost that included $29 million in salary and severance expense.

• 2015 and early 2016, voluntary retirements and staff actions

  CRC ended 2016 with about 1,450 employees, its 2016 10-K shows, nearly 30% fewer than at its 2014 spin-off, mainly through attrition, a voluntary retirement program and other employee actions in the third quarter of 2015 and early 2016.

What to do if you're laid off from California Resources Corporation

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. California Resources Corporation'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 California Resources Corporation'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.