Laid off from News Corp.

What News Corp layoffs have meant for employees

News Corp put a company-wide figure on the headcount reduction it expected in 2023, in its February 2023 results. For the Journal and Dow Jones rounds since, the running count has come from IAPE 1096, the union for Dow Jones staff, and its yearly totals, such as its count for 2025, cover its own members' jobs. Others have been laid off as well, NPR noted of the union's tallies, and the union's own count of its 2026 layoffs came with "several more from the non-union ranks" that it didn't number. If you're outside the union, the published figure for your round may not include your job, so a round can run larger than its best-known count.

Some recent changes came with plans to outsource jobs or move teams to other offices, as the union described in October 2025 and again in June 2026, rather than only eliminating positions. For represented staff, the contract has carried a transfers clause, negotiated in 2019 after Personal Finance reporting jobs in New York were eliminated, that the union says lets employees follow a job moved to another department instead of reapplying for it, and the union cited that clause and the seniority rules in its 2024 grievances over the Washington layoffs. The union also said in its January 2023 statement that how a department is defined had caused it problems before, which matters because seniority is compared within one. If a role of yours is described as moving and the union represents you, the transfers clause and the seniority rules are the two parts of the contract its own complaints have leaned on.

For members, much of what follows a layoff notice runs through the union. It says every member notified of a job elimination gets its Layoff FAQ document, that it checks the company's seniority lists against the contract's procedures, and that it takes a grievance to the company when it believes a layoff broke the agreement. The union doesn't learn whose jobs were cut until management has told each person, it says, so its formal notice tends to arrive late in the day, often after the people let go have lost access to Dow Jones systems, and a personal email address on file with the union is how it reaches members once that access is gone. The union is plain that it can't stop layoffs, since without contract language restricting cuts, management decides how many people it needs, and in an October 2025 statement it called the contract's job security provisions insufficient and said members would remember the layoffs when the agreement is renegotiated.

The union's counts and the company's own figures measure different things. Unions represented about 3,300 News Corp employees in mid-2026, according to its 2026 annual report, and the report's restructuring note doesn't tie the charges it records to any country, business or round. Those charges are the company's yearly measure of restructuring cost for News Corp as a whole, so neither a union tally of represented jobs nor the company-wide charges can stand in for the size of a single round.

For anyone laid off from a job in New Jersey or California, the states where Dow Jones and Move have filed notices, or from a job in New York, our New Jersey, California and New York unemployment pages cover each state's rules for filing a claim.

A sourced history of News Corp layoffs

• June 2026, Dow Jones desk merger plan and technology layoffs

  Editors were invited to volunteer for layoffs before a planned August merger of publishing and platform editors with ten fewer positions, the union said in a corrected post, and Dow Jones picked 14 technology employees for layoff in a change that would shift teams to "strategic office hubs."

• January 2026, Wall Street Journal features restructuring

  Editor in chief Emma Tucker restructured the Journal's features department, long overseen by 42-year veteran Mike Miller, and Status reported the following month that the move resulted in at least a half-dozen layoffs.

• October 2025, Dow Jones notice for 50 Princeton jobs

  A Dow Jones notice covering 50 workers in Princeton was posted in October, New Jersey's 2025 WARN list shows, with layoffs dated January 23 and February 13, 2026.

• October 2025, Journal team cuts and a finance outsourcing plan

  The Journal restructured its Health & Science and Education teams and laid off a dozen staffers, seven of them union-represented reporters, a week after Dow Jones announced plans to outsource 40 union-represented finance jobs to an AI vendor in India, the union said in a statement Talking Biz News carried.

• May 2024, Wall Street Journal national and breaking news layoffs

  The Journal laid off at least eight reporters who covered national and breaking news, NPR reported, following double-digit cuts in Washington and abroad, and union members walked out for an hour in protest.

• February 2024, Wall Street Journal layoffs in Washington

  Dow Jones laid off 17 Journal reporters in Washington on February 1, and the union's March grievances, Talking Biz News reported, said the cuts ignored contract seniority and transfer provisions; a Dow Jones spokesperson, quoted by Politico, said the company had acted consistently with the contract.

• February 2023, News Corp plans company-wide headcount reduction

  News Corp expected to cut its headcount 5% that calendar year as part of initiatives under way, chief executive Robert Thomson said in the February 9 results release, adding that they would create a robust platform for future growth.

• January 2023, HarperCollins North American workforce cut

  HarperCollins, which News Corp's annual report lists among its brands, eliminated some jobs on January 30, Publishers Weekly reported, under a plan to cut 5% of its North American employees before its fiscal year closed on June 30.

• January 2023, Dow Jones layoffs

  Dow Jones told the union it was eliminating positions by layoff that day, in what appeared to be a global effort that reached employees outside the U.S., according to the union's statement in Talking Biz News.

• September 2022, Realtor.com cuts across most departments

  Realtor.com cut regular and contracted employees across most of its departments in response to slowing sales, National Mortgage News reported, citing an email to staff from chief executive David Doctorow.

What to do if you're laid off from News Corp

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