Laid off from RTI International.

What RTI International layoffs have meant for employees

Tim Gabel, RTI's president, told staff in March 2025 that he couldn't promise the cuts were over. "I wish I could tell you these will be the last actions we'll take," he wrote in a letter WRAL viewed, warning that some federal project funding might return while other projects might get new stop-work orders. By then, more than 80 projects had been canceled and others ordered stopped, Bucky Fairfax, RTI's executive vice president of human relations, wrote in a letter to the state. The round announced that week was set to affect RTI's administration and its social and environmental divisions as well as international development, and RTI was also assessing cuts that could come from an executive order to close the Department of Education, one of its clients.

RTI called its first 2025 cuts temporary. If February's temporary layoffs included you, the return date was open from the start, since RTI's February 13 release said "the length of these staffing changes is unknown." By late March the institute was describing reductions under a realignment rather than a pause, with more changes expected in the coming weeks, according to its March 25 release.

The 2020 leave fell on most field data collectors at RTI, who did the in-person interviewing for its nationwide surveys, most often in participants' homes, while others worked reduced hours. They were a remote workforce spread across the country, mostly part-time and tied to the cycle of survey projects, RTI said in an August 2020 statement about its WARN notices, and it still expected their unpaid leave to be temporary, with people possibly returning sooner if public health improved. Both notices are listed under the 3040 East Cornwallis Road address in Durham in the state's 2020 WARN summary, and RTI said it had also let a small group go because one project's needs changed.

RTI's stated reasons changed over time. The early rounds were tied to the aid pause and to unexpected changes in federal funding. By May RTI was calling its cuts a workforce realignment in response to funding shifts and new client priorities, and Gabel said RTI had to streamline its operations in response to market realities and position the institute for future growth while remaining dedicated to its people, in a release CBS17 quoted. The September 2025 reorganization put three senior leaders in new roles and aimed to expand into new markets and speed up projects, ABC11 reported, and in October 2026 RTI presented its newest round as a streamlining of its structure that would sharpen its focus on areas where it could deliver distinctive impact, in remarks that WRAL's October 2026 report carried. RTI also said it remained committed to communicating openly and respectfully during that transition. If you're thinking about applying for another RTI role, those statements set out the direction RTI said it was taking.

RTI expected its layoffs in the Triangle to grow to at least 525 by May 1, according to its March letter to the state as WRAL described it, more than the state's 2025 WARN report lists for the notice it filed. Some positions went with fewer than 60 days' notice because the funding vanished with nothing to replace it, the letter said, and it called those circumstances not reasonably foreseeable and outside RTI's control while leaving room for more layoffs after May 1. If you worked for RTI in North Carolina, North Carolina unemployment benefits covers a claim in the state.