Laid off from Maximus.

What Maximus layoffs have meant for employees

At Maximus, what happens to a government program can decide what happens to the people on it. Several of the company's layoffs on record line up with government work ending, passing to another contractor or slowing after a busy season. When Iowa's Medicaid and Hawk-I member line went to a new company, Maximus's spokesperson told the Des Moines Register that staff had known a layoff was possible because the contract was ending. In Pittsford, the Rochester Business Journal reported, the company traced its notice to a lost CMS contract. If your work sits on one government program, that program's contract dates are worth knowing as well as you know your own schedule.

A contract ending doesn't always end the job. Maximus has pointed to internal moves around several of its cuts. After the May 2023 call-center layoffs it said that, as a company-wide practice, it coordinated with other programs to find open positions for the people affected, in a statement WMNF published, and its Pittsford spokesperson said many people there moved into other Maximus roles. The company's fiscal 2024 annual report gave that practice a name, the Beach, a status for people between projects. If your project is winding down, you can ask whether you'll be placed on the Beach, how long that status can last and whether turning down a reassignment would affect any severance.

Call-center staff went through two rounds in 2023 alone, on lines that answer Medicare, marketplace and CDC questions. Maximus explained them by headcount and by the calendar. In January it told the Louisiana Illuminator that low attrition had left it with a staffing surplus, and it chose who left Bogalusa by tenure and schedule. In May it cited the end of open enrollment season, the time of year when demand for its call centers drops. Workers who spoke to WMNF, in their own accounts, described being cut in what the company called a reduction in force, and one said two weeks' notice wasn't enough for people who had been there a long time. If you're hired around an enrollment season, it's worth asking at the start how long the assignment is expected to run and how tenure and schedule figure into who stays.

The 2025 severance charges belonged to a cost-cutting effort Maximus described on its fourth-quarter earnings call, and a meaningful portion of them landed on U.S. Services, according to the November 2025 earnings release. The same release said that segment's revenue fell 7.7% in fiscal 2025 because the year before had carried extra Medicaid work from the unwinding redeterminations. As workforce totals, the annual reports put U.S. Services at 15,600 employees in September 2024 and 13,600 a year later in the fiscal 2025 annual report, and the count outside the U.S. went from 8,300 to 6,900. The release tied that overseas segment's lower revenue to the sale of several employment services businesses. If you work in one of these segments, those yearly totals are the company's own count of the people it employed there.

If a Maximus notice reaches you, the state's copy is worth reading for what it says about your site. Tennessee's memo on the Memphis notice, for example, gave the street address and recorded that the staff there had no union contract and no bumping rights. If your contract is moving to another company, Maximus said its Iowa staff could apply for open roles with the successor contractor, so the incoming company's hiring is worth asking about directly. Our WARN tracker holds the Maximus filings from the state archives it collects.

A sourced history of Maximus layoffs

• March 2026, Pittsford office after losing a CMS contract

  Maximus's March 31 notice to New York's labor department, a row in our WARN tracker, covered 176 Pittsford jobs with layoffs effective June 30, and the company told the Rochester Business Journal the cuts stemmed from losing its FED QICs Part C contract with CMS.

• February 2026, 30 Broad Street office in Manhattan

  Maximus planned to lay off all 44 workers at its Financial District offices by March 31, according to a state filing that Crain's New York Business reported on February 10.

• Quarter ended September 2025, $16 million in severance charges

  Maximus booked the charges in its fiscal fourth quarter, a meaningful portion of them in U.S. Services, its November 2025 earnings release said. On the fourth-quarter earnings call, the company called the move deliberate action to yield cost savings and said it expected the effort to lift that segment's fiscal 2026 margins.

• December 2024, Iowa Medicaid and Hawk-I contact center

  Maximus announced layoffs of 34 remote workers in central Iowa effective December 31, the Des Moines Register reported, because a new company was taking over its 20-year Iowa Medicaid and Hawk-I member services work on January 1.

• May 2024, Memphis site on South Mendenhall Road

  Maximus gave notice of a permanent layoff on July 31 of 140 workers at its Memphis site, according to a Tennessee labor department memo dated May 24.

• May 2023, layoffs across federal call centers

  The Communications Workers of America said Maximus was laying off more than 700 call-center workers that month who handled calls for CMS and the CDC, and Tysons Reporter covered the labor charges the union filed over the cuts.

• January 2023, Hattiesburg and Bogalusa call centers

  Organizers counted 143 layoffs at the Hattiesburg call center and more than 100 in Bogalusa, the Louisiana Illuminator reported, while Maximus put the Bogalusa figure at about 100.

What to do if you're laid off from Maximus

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Maximus's biggest hubs: New York, Tennessee. 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 Maximus's hub states run: New York, Tennessee, 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.