Laid off from Lear.

Previous rounds

Lear layoff history

Lear counts its cuts in the thousands, and its SEC filings don't say which plants they came from, which is cold comfort if one of them was yours. CEO Ray Scott said the company cut 15,000 employees in 2024. Crain's Detroit Business reported that recent cuts had reached administrative jobs in Southfield, Michigan, and a spokesman said most of the reductions were hourly workers at operations outside the U.S.; the company declined to give specifics. In 2025 global hourly headcount fell another 7,000, for 22,000 over two years, per the Motley Fool's transcript summary of the February 2026 call.

The money shows up more clearly than the people. Lear's 2025 annual report books $253.1 million of restructuring charges, against $138.9 million in 2024 and $132.7 million in 2023, with $194.7 million of the 2025 figure in employee termination benefits. Seating carried $146.1 million and E-Systems $98.3 million, and the segment split is as far as the note goes. The first half of 2026 came in at $69.0 million, down from $117.8 million a year earlier, and the July 2026 outlook put the full year's restructuring costs at about $175 million. On the February call, management put expected 2026 savings from completed and planned restructuring projects at $80 million.

Lear's U.S. closings on record with reported terms were consolidations, where the company expanded another plant and offered the affected workers jobs there. When it closed its Taylor, Michigan electrical systems plant in 2019, affecting 76 employees, Lear said everyone had been offered work at its expanded Traverse City facility, and UAW Local 174 members had bumping rights. In May 2023 its WARN letters for two Detroit plants, Davison and Nevada, covered 558 employees and said Lear had offered to transfer nearly all of them to its new plant on the former Cadillac Stamping site. For anyone who declined or got no offer, the letters said, the layoffs were expected to be permanent, so a transfer letter deserves as slow a read as a layoff notice.

Our WARN tracker holds 7 Lear filings all time, 0 filings covering 0 jobs since the start of 2025, and 0 in 2026. In the aggregator WARNTracker's list, the latest Lear notices are the two Detroit filings of May 3, 2023, at 226 and 332 workers, preceded by Roscommon, Michigan in early 2022 and Hamblen County, Tennessee in March 2021. Under the federal WARN Act, per the Labor Department's summary, a site where a closing or mass layoff reaches 50 or more employees is generally owed at least 60 calendar days of written notice by an employer of 100 or more, and employee representatives, the local chief elected official and the state's dislocated worker unit are to be told as well. Certain states run plant closure laws on top of that, so check a Lear cut against both.

The newest reported cut isn't a U.S. one. IG Metall said Lear told workers at Gründau, Germany in August 2026 that production would wind down by mid-2027, about 180 jobs, with manufacturing and machinery going to Slovakia, Serbia and Tunisia, International Leather Maker reported. At home, Lear is Southfield-based, has run plants in Detroit, Traverse City and Sterling Heights, and reported in July 2026 opening an Advanced Manufacturing Integration Center in Rochester Hills, Michigan. If a Lear letter reaches you, keep its dates together and pull your union contract's layoff language, since Lear's filing names union contracts among the bases for termination benefits.

Reporting on previous Lear layoff rounds

• Six months to July 4, 2026, company-wide · $69.0 million of restructuring charges through July 4, $61.9 million of it employee termination benefits, split by segment with no site named

• 2025, company-wide · Global hourly headcount down 7,000, with $194.7 million of employee termination benefits booked for the year

• 2024, company-wide · 15,000 employees, mostly hourly and mostly at operations outside the U.S., a spokesman said

• May 2023, Davison and Nevada plants, Detroit · 558 employees under two Michigan WARN notices, with both plants to stop operating by June 30, 2023

  Lear offered to transfer nearly all of them to its new Detroit plant, the notices said; for anyone who declined or got no offer, the layoffs were expected to be permanent.

• Early 2022, Roscommon, Michigan · 71 workers on Michigan notices listed for January 28 and February 1, 2022

• July 2021, Xevo, Bellevue, Washington · 97 workers at the connected-car software company Lear bought in 2019, as GeekWire reported from a Washington state filing

• March 2021, Hamblen County, Tennessee · 143 workers on a notice dated March 19, with an April 19, 2021 layoff date

• June 2019, Taylor, Michigan electrical systems plant · 76 employees, with the plant closing around Oct. 21 and its work moved to Traverse City

  Lear said all employees were offered work at the expanded Traverse City facility; some were UAW Local 174 members with bumping rights.

What to do after being laid off from Lear

1. File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Lear's biggest hubs: Michigan. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
2. 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 Lear's hub states run: Michigan, and every other state is here.
3. 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.
4. Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
5. 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.