Laid off from Rite Aid.

Previous rounds

Rite Aid layoff history

Rite Aid stopped being an employer in stages, and the last stage closed the file. It filed its second Chapter 11 on May 5, 2025, jointly administered under Case No. 25-14861 before Chief Judge Michael B. Kaplan in the District of New Jersey, and told the court that whatever went unsold would no longer be owned or operated by Rite Aid. All 89 remaining stores had closed by October 3, 2025, and the effective date of the plan arrived on December 31. A chain that ran 5,059 stores and employed 112,800 people in 2008 finished at zero, and the questions people have about their own money outlasted it.

If you worked in a union store, the terms were written down, and one decided whether you got paid at all. In June 2025 UFCW 8 told the members it covers that anyone who kept working and didn't resign was eligible for 70% of the severance in the collective bargaining agreement, against a signed release, then put the condition plainly, that severance was only paid if you remained employed until your store officially closed, and leaving sooner could forfeit it. UFCW 3000, which covers Bartell Drugs and Rite Aid members in Washington, was blunter, saying it had reports that Bartell Drugs told members to put in their two weeks' notice if they were leaving, and warning that giving notice instead of being laid off meant no severance pay. Its contract set the amount by length of service and worked it out on average hours in the fourteen weeks before separation.

Coverage and accrued time ran on separate clocks. UFCW 8 said its members stayed covered under their existing benefits through the last day of the month in which they were employed, which for anyone separated early in a month is a short tail. On accrued time the same notice said the employer would pay unused paid time off, vacation and holidays as their own contracts or state law required, so what you were owed turns on your contract and your state. Seniority was thinner comfort. Members had the right to transfer to a union store in order of seniority, but UFCW 8 warned that with stores in one area closing within days of each other, they wouldn't have enough time to exercise bumping rights. The pension left on its own track. PBGC says it's moving to take the plan over, because the plan qualifies for termination and can't cover everything it promised.

There's no Rite Aid HR left to call, so the docket holds what answers exist. Kroll runs the claims site for Case No. 25-14861, and it draws a distinction that catches people out, telling anyone asking about the 2023 proceedings, Case No. 23-18993, or filing a claim in them, to use the separate site for that case. The 2025 estate is largely wound up, since on December 30, 2025 the court closed 117 affiliated debtors' cases and left Lakehurst and Broadway Corporation, Case No. 25-14831, as the remaining case. Whether any one person's final wages were paid, and where that claim ranked, isn't in the reporting we track, so the docket is the only place to look. On the notice itself, the Labor Department is the wrong desk. It says the federal court solely enforces the Act, and that its own answers don't bind the courts, which makes a WARN claim a lawsuit, not a complaint form.

Our tracker holds 11 Rite Aid filings all time, and 6 filings covering 1,926 jobs since the start of 2025, across four states, led by 1,096 jobs on one Pennsylvania filing in May 2025. It holds nothing for 2026, which is what the end of a company looks like in filing data. The company said all of its distribution centers would close, while its stores would close or be run by a new owner, and the May 15 announcement moved pharmacy assets from more than a thousand stores to CVS, Walgreens, Albertsons, Kroger and Giant Eagle, with CVS taking the files from 625 pharmacies. Schroeder described those deals as preserving jobs for some of the company's team members, a claim with no number against it. One caution carries over from the first bankruptcy. In March 2024, employees told abc27 that Rite Aid pulled back severance payments it had already deposited, with a company email saying the March 7 payments had been delayed to preserve cash in the short term. Keep your pay stubs, benefit statements and separation letter somewhere you can reach them, because each of these processes asks for them.

Reporting on previous Rite Aid layoff rounds

• October 2025 · All 89 remaining stores had closed by October 3, with the rest of the assets going to liquidation, 63 years after the chain began.

• June 2025 · Maryland's labor department recorded the Mid-Atlantic distribution center in Aberdeen closing and 363 employees laid off on June 5. Our tracker also holds a June 4 Washington filing listing 131 jobs at The Bartell Drug Company.

  No terms on record for the Aberdeen center. At Bartell, UFCW 3000 pointed members to a contract paying one week of severance at two through four years of service, rising to five weeks at ten or more.

• May 2025 · Our tracker holds a May 5 Pennsylvania filing listing 1,096 jobs across York and Philadelphia, which the posted state notice split into Philadelphia at 595 jobs and Etters, York County, at 501. WHYY counted more than 1,100 corporate office workers cut at the Navy Yard headquarters and a central Pennsylvania office. A May 5 California filing listed 297 jobs at Thrifty Payless.

  For its own members, UFCW 8 said accrued and unused paid time off, vacation and holidays were to go to separated associates as their contracts or state law required.

• February 2025 · A February 17 California filing listed 23 jobs, two weeks before the company signed the form ending its SEC reporting.

How Rite Aid's layoffs compare to other companies

Across the companies tracked here, a layoff usually leaves an employer still standing behind it. Rite Aid sold pharmacy files and pharmacy assets to five competing chains and wound itself up. How many of its people those buyers took on isn't in the reporting we track. What's left is an estate, not a company.

What to do after being laid off from Rite Aid

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