Laid off from Forever 21.

What Forever 21 layoffs have meant for employees

The employer name on a Forever 21 layoff record depends on the year. Before the February 2020 sale the employer was the founders' company and its units, such as Forever 21 Retail and Forever 21 Logistics, and most filings since carry the name of F21 OpCo, which took over the stores and the rest of the operating business, as F21 OpCo's first-day declaration explains. In 2025 the California filings in our WARN tracker went in under F21 OpCo, LLC (F21) and F21 OpCO, LLC dba Forever 21 and the Pennsylvania one under Forever 21 OpCo, LLC, and the two bankruptcies ran under separate case numbers, 19-12122 in 2019 and 25-10469 in 2025. Someone searching a state's notice list can match the employer name and the dates in their own records against these. Stores outside the United States were run by other licensees, which the Associated Press reported weren't part of the 2025 filing.

The warehouse records read differently in the two cases. In 2019 Forever 21 Logistics said the Mission Road warehouse staff in Lincoln Heights, next to the headquarters, would be offered transfers to Perris, as the Los Angeles Business Journal wrote, and the company called the move normal course of business, in the works for over a year. In March 2025 the first-day declaration said Maersk, a third-party logistics provider, supplied the labor at the 656,000-square-foot Perris distribution center.

The February 2020 sale kept the chain open under new owners, who said when they finalized it that they "expect to keep Forever 21's 448 U.S. stores open" and planned to keep the Los Angeles headquarters running, Fox Business reported. The first-day declaration put the U.S. store count at about 413 after the purchase and about 354 at the March 2025 filing. On the workforce side, the founders' company reported about 6,400 full-time employees in 2019, and F21 OpCo about 1,750 in March 2025. Each count comes from the court filing of the company that employed those people at the time.

The March 2025 wages motion estimated about $9 million in earned but unpaid employee wages at the filing and said no employee's claim exceeded the $15,150 statutory cap, apart from some employees statutorily entitled to payout of accrued paid time off and severance, with SPARC to pay those claims. It also said an employee who was terminated or resigned forfeited unused, accrued paid time off unless the law prohibited that, put accrued time off at about $4.6 million and sought authority to pay it as applicable law required. If you're owed pay or time off from before that filing, those are the figures and limits the company put before the court. If you were still on F21 OpCo's payroll when its plan took effect, the confirmed plan is what ended the job, since it deemed the debtors' employees terminated on that date.

If you contributed to the 401(k), which Voya administered, the company matched 100% of the first 1% of pay and 50% of the next 5%, up to 3.5%, and the match vested on a two-year schedule, nothing in the first year and all of it after two, according to the wages motion. By that description, anyone under a year into the schedule had no vested match. There's more on 401(k) choices after a layoff. Nine of the 2025 filings were in California and one in Philadelphia; for a claim in either state, the place to start is California unemployment benefits or Pennsylvania's version.

A sourced history of Forever 21 layoffs

• June 2025, F21 OpCo's plan takes effect

  The court confirmed F21 OpCo's plan on June 24 and it took effect June 30, the notice of effective date says. Under the confirmed plan, the debtors' employees were deemed terminated that day.

• March 2025, second Chapter 11 and U.S. wind-down

  F21 OpCo filed on March 16 with about 354 leased U.S. stores, the company's first-day filing shows, and said it would wind down the U.S. business while it looked at a partner or a sale, the Associated Press reported.

• February 2025, headquarters layoffs and store closing notices

  F21 OpCo's February 18 notice to California covered 358 permanent layoffs in Los Angeles, the state's WARN report shows, and eight more February 2025 rows in our WARN tracker are California store closures. The headquarters was closing, Retail Dive reported, and more than 350 people worked there.

• September 2019, first Chapter 11 and store closing plan

  Forever 21, Inc., Forever 21 Retail, Forever 21 Logistics and other affiliates entered Chapter 11, Forever 21's 2019 first-day declaration shows, with plans to close up to 178 of the 549 U.S. stores, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

• September 2019, Lincoln Heights distribution center closing

  In a September 26 letter, Forever 21 Logistics told California it would cease operations at its Lincoln Heights distribution and ecommerce facility, cutting 1,170 workers and offering them transfers to Perris, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported.

What to do if you're laid off from Forever 21

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Forever 21's biggest hubs: California, Pennsylvania. 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 Forever 21's hub states run: California, Pennsylvania, 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.