Laid off from Los Angeles Times.

What Los Angeles Times layoffs have meant for employees

The plainest measure of these years is the count kept by the Los Angeles Times Guild, the newsroom's union. Its ratification announcement says membership roughly halved between 2022 and mid-2025 through layoffs, buyouts and people leaving on their own, so that drop isn't a layoff count. What defines the newsroom's cuts is the process around them. Who goes has been bargained, fought over and sometimes reversed, and if you work there, the details of that process tell you more about your position than the size of the last round does.

If you're in the Guild unit, your hire date has carried real weight. TheWrap's January 2024 report said the contract dictated that month's cuts, last hired, first fired. The Guild's walkout statement, announcing the first work stoppage in the newsroom's history, accused management of trying to "gut seniority protections" so it could pick more freely. Seniority stayed in dispute through the next contract talks, which ran past an 85% strike authorization vote in October 2025. The Guild's announcement doesn't spell out the new layoff language, so what held in 2024 may not hold under the new deal.

Buyouts are where the contract has handed people a real decision. Reckon reported in June 2023 that management had to bargain over proposed layoffs and offer buyouts. If you're in the unit, thinking of leaving anyway, and a window opens, your exit may also spare someone on the list, and that can sit beside the money when you decide. The June 2025 offers show the risk on the other side. A small group of veterans who had volunteered earlier got 48 hours to answer, and the Guild chair's memo, TheWrap reported, said the offers were "roughly half of what select members were entitled to." If you're covered by the Guild and an offer lands with a short clock and a number that looks low, you can take it to the union before the time runs out.

If you're outside the Guild, the published formula is someone else's. The terms in TheWrap's June 2023 report covered Guild members, and non-Guild staff left on a different timeline that month. Reckon said more than a dozen of them had June 7 as their last day, while union-covered staff were to stay up to 30 days under the contract and, per the Times's spokeswoman, collect pay equal to 60 days. A Guild formula doesn't establish what any non-Guild employee is due.

A filing's dates are a plan set down ahead of time, and the printing plant shows how they can drift from what happened. California's report gave the plant's closure an effective date a few days before the final press run that GXpress reported. If you're matching your own last shift against a state notice, a gap like that doesn't mean either record is wrong. A notice speaks for a site on a date chosen weeks earlier. If you worked at the plant, your schedule and pay records say more about your last day than the state's report can.

State filings tell only part of this story. The WARN filings for the Times stop at January 2024, with 0 filings covering 0 jobs since the start of 2025, even though the paper cut staff twice in 2025. For those rounds the word came from the Guild and the press. For sizing a recent cut at the Times, the union's statements and the reporting around them have been the better record, and the state lists are most useful for the plant closings and the multi-state notices of 2023 and 2024.

A sourced history of Los Angeles Times layoffs

• May 2025, 14 newsroom layoffs

  The Guild called it the third round of newsroom layoffs in as many years and said the cuts could still change in bargaining. A person familiar with the cuts told TheWrap most fell in the features department.

• March 2025, operations and communications cuts

  Dozens of employees across the company's operations and communications sections were let go, TheWrap reported in May.

• Early 2025, newsroom buyouts

  Forty newsroom employees accepted buyouts in the months before the May layoffs, TheWrap reported.

• March 2024, Olympic printing plant closing

  California's WARN report lists a January 5 closure notice for 148 jobs at 2000 East 8th Street, effective March 6, and Commercial Observer places the Times's printing plant at that address. The last run at Olympic was March 10, GXpress reported, with production moved to Alden's Riverside plant.

• January 2024, more than 115 newsroom layoffs

  Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong imposed the cuts days after the Guild's one-day walkout, TheWrap reported. They took the Washington bureau chief, the business editor and three business writers, sports beat writers and at least five members of the De Los team.

• June 2023, 74 newsroom positions announced

  Executive editor Kevin Merida announced the cuts, Reckon reported, naming some editing, audience engagement and audio roles. A deal with the Guild later set the plan at 73, including 56 union staffers, and TheWrap reported that approved buyouts would count toward it.

• March 2021, Irwindale closure notice

  California Community News, LLC filed a closure notice for 91 jobs in Irwindale, effective May 28, and Los Angeles Times Communications LLC filed a separate notice for six Irwindale jobs that June, the WARN tracker shows.

• April 2020, closure of three community papers

  The Times told staff of the Burbank Leader, Glendale News-Press and La Cañada Valley Sun that the papers would close effective May 16, LAist reported, with ten union journalists' jobs and four non-union positions eliminated.

What to do if you're laid off from Los Angeles Times

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