Laid off from McDonald's.

Previous rounds

McDonald's layoff history

Losing a McDonald's job stings, and it's worse when you can't tell who made the call. If you work the grill or the drive-thru, start with the name on your paycheck. McDonald's U.S. segment was 95% franchised at the end of 2025, and the company's own headcount covers corporate roles and the restaurants it operates itself, more than 150,000 people worldwide before the 2023 cuts, about 70% of them outside the U.S. Most crews work for a franchisee, not for McDonald's, so a cut or a closing usually comes from the franchisee. That's how it went in November 2025, when the owner closed downtown Oakland's only McDonald's. McDonald's said the owner had no other locations in the city and the workers could apply to other local stores, and a union organizer said they'd been given ten days' notice.

The corporate side got its warning in January 2023, when McDonald's announced Accelerating the Organization. Chris Kempczinski's message to employees said the company would "evaluate roles and staffing levels in parts of the organization," promised "difficult discussions and decisions ahead," and expected to start communicating them by April 3. The same memo said dropping some initiatives would help McDonald's move faster "while reducing our global costs," and it set up a Global Business Services unit to take in the finance and global people functions first.

That April, McDonald's shut its U.S. offices Monday through Wednesday and notified people virtually. The Wall Street Journal reported hundreds of layoffs reaching the Chicago headquarters, field offices and staff abroad, with some employees offered the chance to stay on reduced pay, titles, bonuses or equity. Restaurant owners were told the field offices would close as underutilized, with the field run under a single national structure. Kempczinski had said in January that he didn't have a set dollar amount or number of jobs in mind, and no company count of the cuts is on record.

The filings show what the program cost. Restructuring charges ran $250 million in 2023, $221 million in 2024 and $226 million in 2025. Employee termination benefits were $96 million of that first year, then $6 million and $32 million, while costs outside termination benefits and contract exits took $214 million and $193 million in the two later years. By June 2026 the total stood at $795 million, and the company said it expected about $250 million for 2026, primarily professional services.

On severance, the one schedule on record is a decade old. A 2016 amendment to the McDonald's Corporation Severance Plan, filed with the SEC, paid two weeks of base pay per year of service in a lump sum, with a floor and a cap for each compensation band. For the 2023 round the reported detail is timing, payroll until June 15 and severance after. Whether the 2016 bands still applied isn't on record, so read the number in your own separation letter, not ours.

The California filings are a different animal. Our WARN filing tracker holds 7 filings covering 494 jobs since the start of 2025, every one in California. The largest, 105 jobs in April 2025, was a southeast Fresno restaurant closing in June for a remodel and reopening about two months later. The state logged an 87-job notice from July 2025, filed by McDonald's Restaurants of California, Inc. for a restaurant on South Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, as a temporary closure. A California notice has to mark the action permanent or temporary and give the expected first separation date, so those two entries show how the employer classified your restaurant's cut. Where the restaurant had 75 or more employees over the past year, the law covers a closure of any size with 60 days' written notice, and Rapid Response teams offer job search help, training and a walk through unemployment benefits. Headquarters staff in Chicago should start with the Illinois page below.

Reporting on previous McDonald's layoff rounds

• 2025 and 2026, California restaurants · 7 filings covering 494 jobs since the start of 2025 in our WARN tracker, all in California and led by 105 jobs at a Fresno restaurant closing for a two-month remodel. The state logged an 87-job Los Angeles notice from July 2025 as a temporary closure.

• April 2023 · Hundreds of corporate roles in the U.S. and abroad, from the Chicago headquarters to field offices, notified virtually while U.S. offices closed for three days, the Wall Street Journal reported.

  Terms not published. Laid-off U.S. employees stayed on payroll until June 15 and could receive severance after that, a person familiar with the matter told the Journal.

• 2018 · Management cuts the company said would make it "more dynamic, nimble and competitive," part of a half-billion-dollar plan to shrink administrative expenses by the end of 2019. No headcount appears in the reporting we track.

What to do after being laid off from McDonald's

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