Laid off from Nucor.

What Nucor layoffs have meant for employees

Nucor's pay is built to move with output, and in the slow years on record that's where the cut landed. Production teammates work under group incentives that pay more for more production, paid weekly in most cases, according to Nucor's 2025 Form 10-K, so a slower line shrinks the check. At the Oak Creek bar plant, pay on the shop floor ran about $24 an hour in busy times and could drop below $12.50 when work was slow, Foundry Planet reported in 2011, and the plant's production manager said that in 2009 people were "severely impacted from a pay standpoint" through cut hours and the bonus structure while keeping their jobs and benefits. Nucor kept crews busy then with training, landscaping and building maintenance. When the pandemic hit, Nucor set a guaranteed minimum on hourly teammates' pay for the length of the crisis and said normal benefits would continue, according to its first-quarter 2020 results. If you're in a production role paid partly through group incentives and orders thin out, it's worth budgeting for smaller incentive checks, since that's the part of pay the 2009 account says fell.

Nucor's words to the people at closing plants have ranged from encouragement to seek work inside the company, which an executive offered Nuconsteel's employees as Nucor moved to close that business, according to AIST, to help finding jobs for 2018's buildings employees who wanted to stay, which a spokesperson described to Steel Market Update, to the offer of opportunities at other divisions that Nucor's May 2023 release made to every Longview teammate. Those aren't the same thing. Encouragement and help leave the search to you, and even an offer of opportunities leaves the plant, the job and the pay to be settled. Where the work was headed is a separate matter, since Longview's production was assigned to plate mills in Kentucky, North Carolina and Alabama and Carson City's to Utah, which says where the work was headed, not where any offered job would be.

Nucor's filings in our WARN tracker went to Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada and Texas. If you're looking up one of them there, it may sit under a unit's name, such as Nucor Buildings Group West LLC for the 2025 California notice, American Buildings Co. for Carson City in 2018 or Nuconsteel for the 2012 notices. If you worked at Eufaula or at the California plant, each state's rules are at Alabama unemployment benefits and California unemployment benefits.

If a specific opening comes your way, it's worth knowing which plant, which job and what start date before you answer. If it's a production job paid partly through a group incentive, the group matters as well, since that group's production sets the incentive. The two 2025 notices set their closings to start about two months after they were filed.

Profit sharing follows the company's results too. Nucor has historically set aside 10% of what it earns before federal taxes for profit sharing for most teammates below the officer level, and its profit sharing costs for 2025, including the matching contribution to the Profit Sharing and Retirement Savings Plan, came to $256 million, down from $298 million in 2024 as profitability fell. Other bonuses rise and fall with company goals such as record earnings, so a weaker year can trim more than the weekly incentive. If you leave Nucor with a balance in that plan, 401(k) after a layoff covers the general choices for workplace retirement accounts.

A sourced history of Nucor layoffs

• February 2025, Eufaula and Lathrop buildings plants

  Nucor Buildings Group set closings starting April 21 at Eufaula, Alabama, 79 jobs on Alabama's WARN list, and Lathrop, California, 70 on California's WARN report. A Nucor official told WTVM Eufaula's backlog was going to Texas and workers were being helped toward other divisions in the state.

• August 2024, Chicago tube plant closing

  Nucor told Illinois on Aug. 28 it would close its Nucor Tubular Products plant in Chicago, as our WARN tracker shows, and Steel Market Update reported 47 layoffs set to begin Nov. 27.

• May 2023, Longview plate mill set to stop production

  Nucor planned, its May 2023 release said, to stop production at Nucor Steel Longview, the plate mill it bought in 2016, and to offer every teammate there employment opportunities at other Nucor divisions. The Texas notice in our WARN tracker listed 173 jobs.

• July 2020, Eufaula layoffs

  Nucor told Alabama on July 16 that it planned 309 layoffs in Eufaula starting Sept. 11, an entry on Alabama's WARN list shows.

• January 2018, buildings work to leave Carson City and Starkville

  Nucor said it would move production from its American Buildings plant in Carson City, Nevada to Utah and from Kirby's Starkville, Mississippi plant to Tennessee, a spokesperson told Steel Market Update, which reported about 100 Kirby layoffs. Carson City's notice on Nevada's WARN list covered 111 jobs.

• January 2012, Nuconsteel framing business to close

  Nucor said it would exit light gauge steel framing and close its Nuconsteel division in Denton, Texas and Dallas, Georgia in spring 2012, according to AIST, its CEO saying it lacked the returns or scale Nucor needed.

What to do if you're laid off from Nucor

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