Laid off from C.H. Robinson.

What C.H. Robinson layoffs have meant for employees

Much of the shrinking at C.H. Robinson happened without a layoff announcement. People leave at a steady clip, 19% to 24% of the workforce in a typical year by the Star Tribune's account, and as AI took on more of the work the company wasn't replacing people who left, the paper reported in March 2026. A spokesperson gave Trucking Dive a similar account two years earlier, crediting the falling headcount to attrition, retirements, reorganization and eliminated roles. The company's 2025 10-K counts natural employee turnover among the factors it says will set the size and timing of its restructuring charges. If you're still there, that means a job a colleague leaves may not come back, whether or not anyone calls it a cut.

The company has been plain about which work it's automating. In July 2026 its chief executive said Lean AI automates "manual processes in the quote-to-cash lifecycle of an order," crediting it with productivity gains of more than 60% since the end of 2022 in both North American Surface Transportation and Global Forwarding, according to the second-quarter release. By the Star Tribune's account, the company's AI agents open and sort emailed freight orders, classify freight and book pickup and drop-off appointments. Executives have tied the smaller headcount to productivity gains rather than to freight volumes, FreightWaves reported. If your job is mostly those steps and you'd rather stay, you can look at whether customer- and carrier-facing openings exist now and whether internal candidates can apply, since those are the roles the company told the outlet in March 2026 it continued to hire for.

The 2026 filings show where the program's severance costs have landed. In the six months through June 2026 C.H. Robinson booked nearly as much severance as in all of 2025, going by the annual report and its June-quarter 10-Q. By our arithmetic, about two-thirds of that half-year's restructuring personnel costs sat in North American Surface Transportation, up from about a third in 2025, when Global Forwarding carried the largest share. The North American unit's costs for those six months already topped its total for all of 2025, which tilted the program's expense mix toward that division in the first half of 2026. RXO would join the same division if that purchase closes, since the deal announcement says C.H. Robinson will fold RXO mostly into it.

The RXO deal would carry the Lean AI model into a second company. C.H. Robinson expects that approach to deliver the deal's cost synergies, and shared-services savings are among the sources the announcement lists. If you work at RXO, especially in a shared-services job, C.H. Robinson's record since 2022 shows what that model has looked like inside the company that built it. The announced integration and the Lean AI savings plan both depend on the purchase closing, which the companies expected in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and a vote of RXO's stockholders.

No WARN notice under C.H. Robinson's name, or under the names of its U.S. units, appears in our WARN tracker, which leaves the company's filings and the press as the record of these cuts. If you were based at the Eden Prairie headquarters or at one of the large leased offices in Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri, we keep each of those states' unemployment rules on our Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri pages. The company has also been shrinking its office space along with its staff, consolidating locations in 2025 to match its workforce reductions, the 10-K says.

A sourced history of C.H. Robinson layoffs

• Early 2026, buyouts for a limited group of leaders

  C.H. Robinson offered "a voluntary severance program to a limited group of leaders," it told the Star Tribune. Roughly 26 of about 160 people offered took packages with about nine months of severance pay and accelerated stock vesting, a person familiar with the matter told FreightWaves.

• 2025, restructuring built on automation and AI

  From the second quarter of 2025, C.H. Robinson cut manual work with automation and AI under a restructuring its annual 10-K ties to severance for workforce reductions, charges its June-quarter 10-Q shows continuing through June 2026.

• June 2024, North American Surface Transportation cuts

  Less than 2% of roles in North American Surface Transportation were affected in June as part of a restructuring, C.H. Robinson told FreightWaves. Sources told the outlet about 80 of 150 U.S. sales representatives were let go, a count the company disputed.

• 2024, restructuring trims management layers

  C.H. Robinson's 2024 restructuring included "optimizing our management hierarchy, which included a reduction in workforce," the company's annual 10-K says, and it puts that year's severance charges under the program at $22.1 million.

• May 2023, about 300 jobs cut

  C.H. Robinson laid off about 300 workers, mostly in shared services and non-engineering technology roles, according to Supply Chain Dive, and a spokesperson said the cut came to just under 2% of its global workforce.

• November 2022, 650 jobs cut

  C.H. Robinson laid off 650 workers, 3.6% of its staff, the Star Tribune reported, after its CEO told analysts that "we likely [got] ahead of ourselves in terms of head count." A spokesman said it was providing transition assistance.

What to do if you're laid off from C.H. Robinson

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. C.H. Robinson's biggest hubs: Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri. 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 C.H. Robinson's hub states run: Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, 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.